More than glue: Glia cells found to regulate synapses

More than glue: Glia cells found to regulate synapses: The brain is like a social network, says Prof. Ben-Jacob. Messages may originate with the neurons, which use the synapses as their delivery system, but the glia serve as an overall moderator, regulating which messages are sent on and when. These cells can either prompt the transfer of information, or slow activity if the synapses are becoming overactive. This makes the glia cells the guardians of our learning and memory processes, he notes, orchestrating the transmission of information for optimal brain function.

Mimicking the brain, in silicon - MIT News Office

Mimicking the brain, in silicon - MIT News Office: With about 400 transistors, the silicon chip can simulate the activity of a single brain synapse...
The MIT researchers designed their computer chip so that the transistors could mimic the activity of different ion channels...

Previously, researchers had built circuits that could simulate the firing of an action potential, but not all of the circumstances that produce the potentials. “If you really want to mimic brain function realistically, you have to do more than just spiking. You have to capture the intracellular processes that are ion channel-based,” Poon says.

Music of the brain: each synapse has its own natural rhythm | KurzweilAI

Music of the brain: each synapse has its own natural rhythm | KurzweilAI: Contrary to what was previously assumed, Mehta and Kumar found that stimulating the neurons at the highest frequencies was not the best way to increase synaptic strength. “To our surprise, we found that beyond the optimal frequency, synaptic strengthening actually declined as the frequencies got higher.”

The knowledge that a synapse has a preferred frequency for maximal learning led the researchers to compare optimal frequencies based on the location of the synapse on a neuron...

The optimal frequency for inducing synaptic learning changed depending on where the synapse was located. The farther the synapse was from the neuron’s cell body, the higher its optimal frequency.

“Incredibly, when it comes to learning, the neuron behaves like a giant antenna, with different branches of dendrites tuned to different frequencies for maximal learning,” Mehta said.

See no shape, touch no shape, hear a shape?

See no shape, touch no shape, hear a shape?: In the study, blindfolded sighted participants were trained to recognize tactile spatial information using sounds mapped from abstract shapes. Following training, the individuals were able to match auditory input to tactually discerned shapes and showed generalization to new auditory-tactile or sound-touch pairings...
 “On one hand, this organization leads to unique sense-specific percepts, such as colour in vision or pitch in hearing. On the other hand our perceptual system can integrate information present across different senses and generate a unified representation of an object. We can perceive a multisensory object as a single entity because we can detect equivalent attributes or patterns across different senses.”