Impact of structural plasticity on memory capacity

Bozelos, P., and Poirazi, P. (2017). In: Van Ooyen, A., and Butz-Ostendorf, M., eds. The Rewiring Brain: A Computational Approach to Structural Plasticity in the Adult Brain. San Diego: Academic Press, pp. 319-341.

Abstract

Structural plasticity refers to diverse modifications in the anatomical properties of the neural tissue, including changes in the number, location, and size of spines, filopodia, dendritic and axonal branching patterns. While such changes have been extensively documented in the developing brain and/or as a result of learning, little is known about the way they influence the brain’s capacity to form, store, or recall new memories. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the forms and conditions under which structural modifications take place and discuss theoretical approaches that try to explain how such processes may affect learning and storage in the brain. Growing evidence suggests that activity-dependent reallocation of synapses, as well as dendritic remodeling, can enhance the learning and storage capacity of the neural tissue. This enhancement results primarily from the exploitation of nonlinear dendritic mechanisms which are optimized through structural modifications.