In humans, the process of learning is driven by different groups of cells in the brain firing together. For instance, when the neurons associated with the process of recognizing a dog begin to fire in a coordinated manner in response to the cells that encode the features of a dog—four legs, fur, a tail, etc.—a young child will eventually be able to identify dogs going forward.
But brain wiring begins before humans are born, before they have experiences or senses like sight to guide this cellular circuitry. How does that happen? In a new study in , Yale researchers have identified how begin to coalesce into this wired network in early development before experience has a chance to shape the brain. It turns out that very follows the same rules as later development—cells that fire together wire together.
But rather than experience being the driving force, it's spontaneous cellular activity. "One of the fundamental questions we are pursuing is how the brain gets wired during development," said Michael Crair, co-senior author of the study and the William Ziegler III Professor of Neuroscience at Yale School of Medicine. "What are the rules and mechanisms that govern ? These findings help answer that question.
" For the study, researchers focused on mouse retinal ganglion cells, which project from the retina to a region of the brain called the superior colliculus where they connect to downstream target neurons. The researchers simultaneously measured the activity of a single ret.