Dependence of cortical plasticity on correlated activity of single neurons and on behavioral context.

It has not been possible to analyze the cellular mechanisms underlying learning in behaving mammals because of the difficulties in recording intracellularly from awake animals. Therefore, in the present study of neuronal plasticity in behaving monkeys, the net effect of a single neuron on another neuron (the "functional connection") was evaluated by cross-correlating the times of firing of the two neurons. When two neurons were induced to fire together within a short time window, the functional connection between them was potentiated, and when simultaneous firing was prevented, the connection was depressed. These modifications were strongly dependent on the behavioral context of the stimuli that induced them. The results indicate that changes in the temporal contingency between neurons are often necessary, but not sufficient, for cortical plasticity in the adult monkey: behavioral relevance is required.

[1]  G. P. Moore,et al.  Neuronal spike trains and stochastic point processes. I. The single spike train. , 1967, Biophysical journal.

[2]  E. Kandel,et al.  Cellular neurophysiological approaches in the study of learning. , 1968, Physiological reviews.

[3]  G. Stent.  A physiological mechanism for Hebb's postulate of learning. , 1973, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[4]  E. Kandel.  Cellular basis of behavior: An introduction to behavioral neurobiology. , 1976 .

[5]  M. Abeles,et al.  Multispike train analysis , 1977, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[6]  T. Sejnowski,et al.  Storing covariance with nonlinearly interacting neurons , 1977, Journal of mathematical biology.

[7]  Roman Bek,et al.  Discourse on one way in which a quantum-mechanics language on the classical logical base can be built up , 1978, Kybernetika.

[8]  W. Levy,et al.  Synapses as associative memory elements in the hippocampal formation , 1979, Brain Research.

[9]  A G Barto,et al.  Toward a modern theory of adaptive networks: expectation and prediction. , 1981, Psychological review.

[10]  H. Markowitsch,et al.  Epidural kainate, but not ibotenate, produces lesions in local and distant regions of the brain. A comparison of the intracerebral actions of kainic acid and ibotenic acid , 1982, Journal of Neuroscience Methods.

[11]  Ron D. Frostig,et al.  The effects of stimuli on the activity and functional connectivity of local neuronal groups in the cat auditory cortex , 1983, Brain Research.

[12]  W. Levy,et al.  Temporal contiguity requirements for long-term associative potentiation/depression in the hippocampus , 1983, Neuroscience.

[13]  Gonzalo Viana Di Prisco,et al.  Hebb synaptic plasticity , 1984, Progress in Neurobiology.

[14]  D. Alkon,et al.  Cellular mechanisms of learning, memory, and information storage. , 1985, Annual review of psychology.

[15]  S. Kelso,et al.  Hebbian synapses in hippocampus. , 1986, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[16]  R. Rescorla.  Behavioral studies of Pavlovian conditioning. , 1988, Annual review of neuroscience.

[17]  Y. Frégnac,et al.  A cellular analogue of visual cortical plasticity , 1988, Nature.

[18]  M. Stryker,et al.  Neural plasticity without postsynaptic action potentials: less-active inputs become dominant when kitten visual cortical cells are pharmacologically inhibited. , 1988, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[19]  W. Singer,et al.  Pharmacological induction of use-dependent receptive field modifications in the visual cortex. , 1988, Science.

[20]  M K Habib,et al.  Dynamics of neuronal firing correlation: modulation of "effective connectivity". , 1989, Journal of neurophysiology.

[21]  E. W. Kairiss,et al.  Hebbian synapses: biophysical mechanisms and algorithms. , 1990, Annual review of neuroscience.

[22]  W. Singer,et al.  Different voltage-dependent thresholds for inducing long-term depression and long-term potentiation in slices of rat visual cortex , 1990, Nature.

[23]  C. Woody,et al.  Properties of associative long-lasting potentiation induced by cellular conditioning in the motor cortex of conscious cats , 1991, Neuroscience.

[24]  Moshe Abeles,et al.  Corticonics: Neural Circuits of Cerebral Cortex , 1991 .

[25]  G. Recanzone,et al.  Topographic reorganization of the hand representation in cortical area 3b owl monkeys trained in a frequency-discrimination task. , 1992, Journal of neurophysiology.

[26]  S. Aou,et al.  Increases in excitability of neurons of the motor cortex of cats after rapid acquisition of eye blink conditioning , 1992, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[27]  M. Ahissar,et al.  Encoding of sound-source location and movement: activity of single neurons and interactions between adjacent neurons in the monkey auditory cortex. , 1992, Journal of neurophysiology.