A New Type of Neuroplasticity Rewires the Brain After a Single Experience

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"... Recently, neuroscientists described a new form of neuroplasticity that might be helping the brain learn across a timescale of several seconds — long enough to capture the behavioral process of learning from a single experience. In two recent reviews ... describe “behavioral timescale synaptic plasticity,” or BTSP. This type of learning in the hippocampus, the brain’s memory hub, is caused by an electrical change that affects multiple neurons at once and unfolds across several seconds. Researchers suspect that it may help the brain learn in a single attempt. ..."

From the abstract (1):

"Understanding how brains learn and remember remains among the most important challenges in science. Recent studies in the hippocampus implicate a new form of synaptic plasticity, named behavioral timescale synaptic plasticity (BTSP), in the generation of experience-based learning and memory. BTSP is a strong, bidirectional type of plasticity that affects synaptic weights over many seconds of time.

It is induced by single dendritic plateau potentials, as opposed to many action potentials, and is thus capable of producing new place cells in one trial.

Plateau potential initiation is controlled, at least in part, by local feedback inhibition and an instructive input from a higher-order brain region that potentially links the plasticity to current experience.

The new credit assignment procedure in BTSP provides a nonstandard mechanism for memory storage and retrieval that could mitigate the need for widespread synapse stabilization. In addition, it may allow hippocampal networks both to form memories of specific behavioral episodes and to generalize on the basis of past episodes.

Finally, recent BTSP investigations could provide a basis for future explorations into how brains learn and remember, ranging from the systems and cognitive levels down to the basic biochemical building blocks of learning and memory."

From the abstract (2):

"Hebbian synaptic plasticity is currently the main framework to relate neuronal activity, network structure, and learning and memory.

However, recent experimental and computational modeling studies have revealed a new form of synaptic plasticity termed behavioral timescale synaptic plasticity (BTSP).

It is triggered by dendritic plateau potentials associated with somatic burst firing, causes large changes in synaptic strength in a single shot, and operates on the timescale of seconds.

Here we review the recent advances in our understanding of the circuit, cellular, and molecular mechanisms of BTSP, its prevalence in the brain, its role in shaping neuronal representations, and the emerging ideas regarding its contribution to different forms of learning."

A New Type of Neuroplasticity Rewires the Brain After a Single Experience | Quanta Magazine "“Neurons that fire together, wire together” is not the full story. A novel mechanism explains how the brain can learn across longer timescales."

Behavioral timescale synaptic plasticity: properties, elements and functions (1, review article, no public access)

Behavioral Timescale Synaptic Plasticity: A Burst in the Field of Learning and Memory (2, no public access)

Dendrites, the extended branches that receive signals from other neurons, are the star players in a recently described type of neuroplasticity. In this image of stained pyramidal neurons from the cerebral cortex, rootlike dendrites extend from the cell bodies.