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Nature 450, 1173-1175 (20 December 2007) | doi:10.1038/4501173a; Published online 19 December 2007

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Neuroscience: Neighbourly synapses

Bernardo L. Sabatini1

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Experiences shape our behaviour, memories and perception. Mechanistically, they also influence the brain's circuitry, and cooperativity between neuronal contacts during learning may contribute to this process.

Neuronal plasticity describes experience-related and development-associated structural and functional changes in the brain, which contribute to, among other processes, memory formation. Such changes occur at many levels; for example, depriving an animal of visual stimuli results in both small-scale modifications in neuronal receptors, and large-scale rewiring of neural circuits1, 2.

  1. Bernardo L. Sabatini is in the Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, 220 Longwood Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.
    Email: bsabatini@hms.harvard.edu

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