New Evidence in Learnings's Effect on Brain--by David Perlman, SF Chronicle Science writer
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"Li Zuo, a neurobiologist at UC Santa Cruz, has discovered how learning and memory imprint their effects on the brain . . . that in learning a new task, the connections between specific cells in the brain are swiftly rewired, and that those fresh connections can become permanent . . . In other words, the new connections--known as synapses--remain fixed.
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In the lab, she and her lab colleagues used some tricky, but harmless techniques available to brain researchers who study mice as models for the human condition.
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The patiently trained scores of the mice, one at a time, to put a foreleg through a slot in a transparent plastic box and to grab a single speck of delicious birdseed no bigger than a pinhead.
Some of the mice they trained were only a few days old, while others were teenagers and adults.
Rewiring in under an hour. After training, the scientists took high-tech movies of the living animals' brains--a procedure possible because the mice were genetically bred so their brain cell connections would show up on film glowing from fluorescence after each training exercise. It was painless to the mice.
. The synapses are formed by other tiny brain structures called dendritic spines. And in the lab, Zuo and her colleagues found that those microscopic spines not only rewired the connections in less than an hour after the mice were trained, but then remained stable permanently. After learning a different task, the mice were challenged again with the original birdseed task, and they performed almost flawlessly--proof that they hadn't forgotten, Zuo said. And a second set of movies of their brains showed that the earlier rewired synapses and dendritic spines had remained intact."
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Jim Said: "It is also possible to feel it, or to be aware that it is occurring."
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