UC San Diego

A hallmark of the brain is its capacity of learning, which broadly refers to the animal’s ability to constantly adapt to the changing environments by adjusting its behaviors. Learning in the brain happens across a wide range of spatiotemporal scales. Here we present three modeling works that links biological mechanisms of learning across different spatial scales, including linking molecular mechanisms to cellular functions of synaptic transmission, the effects of synaptic plasticity on network dynamics, and circuit mechanisms for multi-sensory perceptions. Beyond their specific contexts, the results in these works are expected to provide general methods and tools to bridge learning mechanisms across scales and elucidate principles governing the brain's capability of learning, one of the unique features of intelligence.