There are two aspects to neuron shape. One is the pattern of dendritic or axonal branching, and the other is the pattern of spines. Spines are the little protrusions that come off of the dendrite often receiving synaptic inputs.
Because these spines are associated with excitatory synapses, and because synapse development is thought to be the cellular basis of learning, it makes sense that spines would grow when we learn.
But how would they grow exactly?
Using transcranial two-photon microscopy (a window into the brain of a living mouse), Fu et al. (2012) have caught images of neural learning in action.
The authors used two learning tasks to investigate how spines grow during learning. In the "reaching" task, mice had to reach their paw into a slit and grab a seed. In the "capellini handling task" the mouse is given a 2.5 cm length of (I am not making this up) angel hair pasta and learns how to handle it for eating. learning is measured by how fast the mouse eats the pasta.
They found that spines grow during learning (not too surprising). But spines also grow when the mouse is exposed to a motor-enriched environment (like a mouse-sized playground).
The interesting difference between learning a specific task rather than just playing is that the spines grow in distinct clusters when the mice are taught a learning task. C shows the total spine growth, while D shows the proportion of clustered spines to total spines. Reach only means the mice were only taught the reaching task, and cross-training means they were taught both the reaching task and the pasta handling task.
The authors explain two possible functions for these spine clusters:
And of course...
© TheCellularScale
Fu M, Yu X, Lu J, & Zuo Y (2012). Repetitive motor learning induces coordinated formation of clustered dendritic spines in vivo. Nature, 483 (7387), 92-5 PMID: 22343892
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| spines on a pyramidal neuron (source) |
But how would they grow exactly?
Using transcranial two-photon microscopy (a window into the brain of a living mouse), Fu et al. (2012) have caught images of neural learning in action.
 |
| A window into the mouse brain (source) |
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| learning how to eat pasta makes mouse cortical spines grow (source) |
They found that spines grow during learning (not too surprising). But spines also grow when the mouse is exposed to a motor-enriched environment (like a mouse-sized playground).
 |
| Fu et al. 2012 (Figure 2C+D) |
The interesting difference between learning a specific task rather than just playing is that the spines grow in distinct clusters when the mice are taught a learning task. C shows the total spine growth, while D shows the proportion of clustered spines to total spines. Reach only means the mice were only taught the reaching task, and cross-training means they were taught both the reaching task and the pasta handling task.
The authors explain two possible functions for these spine clusters:
"Positioning multiple synapses between a pair of neurons in close proximity allows nonlinear summation of synaptic strength, and potentially increases the dynamic range of synaptic transmission well beyond what can be achieved by random positioning of the same number of synapses."Meaning spines that are clustered and receive inputs from the same neuron have more power to influence the cell than spines further apart.
"Alternatively, clustered new spines may synapse with distinct (but presumably functionally related) presynaptic partners. In this case, they could potentially integrate inputs from different neurons nonlinearly and increase the circuit’s computational power. "Meaning that maybe the spines don't receive input from the same neuron, but are clustered so they can integrate signals across neurons more powerfully.
And of course...
"Distinguishing between these two possibilities would probably require circuit reconstruction by electron microscopy following in vivo imaging to reveal the identities of presynaptic partners of newly formed spines."More work is needed to figure out what is really going on.
© TheCellularScale
Fu M, Yu X, Lu J, & Zuo Y (2012). Repetitive motor learning induces coordinated formation of clustered dendritic spines in vivo. Nature, 483 (7387), 92-5 PMID: 22343892
