Neuronal regulation: A mechanism for synaptic pruning during brain maturation.
Neural Comput
; 11(8): 2061-80, 1999 Nov 15.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-10578044
ABSTRACT
Human and animal studies show that mammalian brains undergo massive synaptic pruning during childhood, losing about half of the synapses by puberty. We have previously shown that maintaining the network performance while synapses are deleted requires that synapses be properly modified and pruned, with the weaker synapses removed. We now show that neuronal regulation, a mechanism recently observed to maintain the average neuronal input field of a postsynaptic neuron, results in a weight-dependent synaptic modification. Under the correct range of the degradation dimension and synaptic upper bound, neuronal regulation removes the weaker synapses and judiciously modifies the remaining synapses. By deriving optimal synaptic modification functions in an excitatory-inhibitory network, we prove that neuronal regulation implements near-optimal synaptic modification and maintains the performance of a network undergoing massive synaptic pruning. These findings support the possibility that neural regulation complements the action of Hebbian synaptic changes in the self-organization of the developing brain.
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Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Synapses
/
Brain
/
Aging
/
Models, Neurological
/
Neurons
Type of study:
Prognostic_studies
Limits:
Animals
/
Humans
Language:
En
Journal:
Neural Comput
Journal subject:
INFORMATICA MEDICA
Year:
1999
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Israel