Sensory experience is essential for the refinement of neuronal circuits during development
and for learning and memory in the adult brain. Such experience-dependent plasticity is …

In this thesis I propose various activity-driven synaptic plasticity mechanisms that could
account for the speed, selectivity and invariance of the neuronal responses in the visual …

The relative timing of presynaptic and postsynaptic spikes plays a critical role in activity-
induced synaptic modification. Here we examined whether plasticity of orientation selectivity …

Spike timing dependent plasticity (STDP) is a learning rule that modifies synaptic strength as
a function of the relative timing of pre-and postsynaptic spikes. When a neuron is repeatedly …

Short-term synaptic plasticity is phylogenetically widespread in ascending sensory systems
of vertebrate brains. Such plasticity is found at all levels of sensory processing, including in …

The mechanisms underlying experience-dependent plasticity and refinement of central
circuits are not yet fully understood. A non-Hebbian form of synaptic plasticity, which scales …

It is widely assumed that the complexity of neural circuits enables them to implement diverse
learning tasks using just a few generic forms of synaptic plasticity. In contrast, we report that …

Visual stimuli are known to induce various changes in the receptive field properties of adult
cortical neurons, but the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. Repetitive pairing …

Neural circuits are extensively refined by sensory experience during postnatal development.
How the maturation of recurrent cortical synapses may contribute to events regulating the …

Precise patterns of neural connectivity and synaptic communication are modified by
experience during restricted" sensitive" periods of development, and the circuitry and …