Psychology 3442F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Synaptic Plasticity, Auditory Cortex, Negative Relationship

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 3442F/G
• Professor: Emily Ansari

Document Summary

There is then an explosion in the number of connections between neurons: synapse elimination: after the initial increase in the number of synapses, there is a period of elimination. It is completed at different stages (different time scales) in different brain areas (eg. it happens later in the prefrontal cortex and earlier in the sensorimotor cortex) Where does this data come from: animal studies, post-mortem (although you can"t measure behavioural responses) fmri studies, measuring gray matter volume (we can make links between an increase in myelination and gray matter volume) It occurs at multiple levels: synaptic plasticity, representational plasticity at the level of synapses. Plastic changes in the brain that result from information that is ubiquitous in the environment. Eg. light, sound, patterns in the environment, colours. Evolution has designed the brain to expect certain experiences: experience-dependent. Plastic changes that occur to allow the individual to adapt to her idiosyncratic environment (physical, linguistic)