Fig. 4: Negative plasticity is the sine qua non of memory. | Molecular Psychiatry

Fig. 4: Negative plasticity is the sine qua non of memory.

From: The times they are a-changin’: a proposal on how brain flexibility goes beyond the obvious to include the concepts of “upward” and “downward” to neuroplasticity

Fig. 4

Downward structural changes such as spine removal and/or dendritic shrinkage underlie the functional weakening of synaptic strength that happens during LTD and in some specific phases of memory. Each memory phase has its particular cellular mechanism, however some of them are shared. The bottom figure abridges how AMPAR/GluA2 internalization triggered by NMDAR/GluN2B-mediated LTD is a fundamental shared cellular mechanism by which synaptic weakening happens in all these memory processes.

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