Dr. Michael Kilgard

But 99.99999 times out of 100, I don't do it.

I just let it go.

I was going to strengthen it, but then that wasn't important.

I just let it go.

A handful of seconds each hour matter, and we're trying to pick which ones matter.

Maybe it's 100, but it's not every second matters, some small fraction.

And what we discovered is by triggering this release,

We're using the same way biology always works.

It's how you learn to play violin.

I made a squeaky note.

I go, oh, something there was wrong.

I need to make an adjustment.

And what's weird is it's the same cocktail when it's a good thing or a bad thing.

Cetylcholine, norepinephrine, serotonin.

Dopamine, of course, changes negatively when it's bad and positively when it's good.

But all of these things dump onto the cell.

That postsynaptic cell spine is trying to figure out, should I strengthen or weaken?

And they all work together in a very bizarre way to create that spike timing-dependent plasticity.

And so it's a four-factor learning rule.

Relative timing, pre-post, thousandth of a millisecond is two of them.