Experience-Dependent Plasticity in the Central Nervous System

Abstract

Environmental influences play a key role in shaping the central nervous system architecture. The interaction of a living organism with the external environment is critical for the survival of the species diversity as it allows an individual to perceive and respond properly to changing environmental conditions. The capacity of the nervous system to change in response to environmental stimuli, referred to as plasticity, underlies experience-dependent modifications of brain functions. This feature is fundamental for neural circuitries to be sculpted by external signals and is of particular relevance in processes of learning and memory. How does sensory experience modify synaptic circuitries in the brain? This will be one of the topics we shall concentrate on along this chapter. The nervous system translates information from the external world through signals generated by the electrical activity associated to sensory inputs, and orchestrates adaptive responses to changing environmental conditions. This, in turn, depends upon adaptations of the brain that gathers and processes information to increase the probability of an individual to survive and reproduce. A bird and a bat, for instance, may share a given ecosystem but how perception of the environment occurs in these animals largely differs, as in the former the sense of vision predominates whereas in the latter it is a world of echolocation.