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 circuits. Many of these changes involve plasticity at the level of synapses, the specialized contact points between neurons, and much of the tremendous learning power of the mammalian brain is thought to arise directly from the vast number of synapses that it contains.
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