A large body of literature now exists to substantiate the long-held idea that musicians' brains differ structurally and functionally from non-musicians' brains. These differences include changes in volume, morphology, density, connectivity, and function across many regions of the brain. In addition to the extensive literature that investigates these differences cross-sectionally by comparing mu...

This protocol describes the preparation of hippocampal slice cultures from rat or mouse pups using sterile conditions that do not require the use of antibiotics or antimycotics. Combining very good optical and electrophysiological accessibility with a lifetime approaching that of the intact animal, many fundamental questions about synaptic plasticity and long-term dynamics of network connectivi...

Much research effort into synaptic plasticity has been motivated by the idea that modifications of synaptic weights (or strengths or efficacies) underlie learning and memory. Here, we examine the possibility of exploiting the statistics of experimentally measured synaptic weights to deduce information about the learning process. Analysing distributions of synaptic weights requires a theoretical...

In the hippocampal formation, the sequential activation of place-specific cells represents a conceptual model for the spatio-temporal events that assemble episodic memories. The imprinting of behavioral sequences in hippocampal networks might be achieved via spike-timing-dependent plasticity and phase precession of the spiking activity of neurons. It is unclear, however, whether phase precessio...

Reward-based learning in neural systems is challenging because a large number of parameters that affect network function must be optimized solely on the basis of a reward signal that indicates improved performance. Searching the parameter space for an optimal solution is particularly difficult if the network is large. We show that Hebbian forms of synaptic plasticity applied to synapses between...

Since synaptic plasticity is regarded as a potential mechanism for memory formation and learning, there is growing interest in the study of its underlying mechanisms. Recently several evolutionary models of cellular development have been presented, but none have been shown to be able to evolve a range of biological synaptic plasticity regimes. In this paper we present a biologically plausible e...

To examine how hippocampal neurons respond to a mismatch between retrieved and actual experience, we trained rats to find a hidden platform at a particular location in an annular watermaze and then moved the platform. Several cells that were silent at the new platform location before the move fired vigorously when the rat found the goal. The new activity was paralleled by reduced discharge in a...

Barn owls provide an experimentally well-specified example of a temporal map, a neuronal representation of the outside world in the brain by means of time. Their laminar nucleus exhibits a place code of interaural time differences, a cue which is used to determine the azimuthal location of a sound stimulus, e.g., prey. We analyze a model of synaptic plasticity that explains the formation of suc...

Functional imaging studies have shown that seniors exhibit more elaborate brain activation than younger controls while performing motor tasks. Here, we investigated whether this age-related overactivation reflects compensation or dedifferentiation mechanisms. "Compensation" refers to additional activation that counteracts age-related decline of brain function and supports successful performance...