How brain learns new skills

The skills needed to perform any activities are stored in the brain as procedural memories. Researchers from the Gladstone Institutes uncovered how a special type of neuron improves the efficiency of this type of learning. The scientists wanted to show how the specialized brain cells, called fast-spiking interneurons, cause movement disorders, such as Tourette's syndrome, dystonia, and dyskinesia.

The team, led by Gladstone Senior Investigator Anatol C. Kreitzer, PhD, was trying to understand the basic mechanisms of the basal ganglia, which are a group of interconnected neurons in the brain that control movement and are associated with decision-making and action selection. Fast-spiking interneurons represent only about 1 percent of the neurons in that brain region, but are known to have an outsized role in organizing the circuit activity.

The leading hypothesis in the field was that these interneurons were involved in motor control, and that their loss might be related to movement disorders. They discovered that the interneurons are much more important for learning and memory, and potentially more closely related to psychiatric disease than movement disorders.

The team found that the interneurons play a fundamental role in brain plasticity, which is the brain's ability to strengthen or weaken connections between neurons. By doing so, the brain can store information and procedural memory.

The fast-spiking interneurons act like gatekeepers for plasticity. They restrict when plasticity can occur, meaning that they can prevent changes in the connection strength between neurons. This is crucial for learning and memory and, more specifically, for enabling the basal ganglia to remember how to perform tasks.

In other parts of the brain, these same neurons are known to be crucial for processing sensory input, such as vision or touch, and their dysfunction is associated with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Fast-spiking interneurons could be a key factor in controlling the efficiency of the learning process in those systems as well.
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