| The brain changes its properties in response to sensory experience, allowing it to adapt to the structures in sensory information and to make associations between those structures and the animal's behavioral goals. This process involves changes to the synaptic connections and intrinsic properties of neurons, which occur only in response to particular patterns of activity. In numerous preparations, the coincident activity of a neuron's inputs and its own spikes causes the strength of those inputs to change in a manner that depends critically on the temporal interval between the input and output. In experiments described here, I show that this simple rule for plasticity operates in vivo, and can induce rapid, long-lasting changes to the response properties of visual neurons in the cortex. |
