New tricks and old spines

Imaging of brain structures in living mice reveals that learning new tasks leads to persistent remodelling of synaptic structures, with each new skill associated with a small and unique assembly of new synapses. Synapse structure in memory: changes within hours Long-term memories for motor skill tasks are associated with enhanced synaptic efficacy in the motor cortex. Here, rapid structural responses in individual neurons are revealed to potentially underlie motor learning skill retention. In experiments in which mice were trained to perform a reaching task, new neuronal spines were selectively stabilized within hours, with different spines/putative synapse sets encoding distinct learned motor skills. These stabilized morphological changes are proposed to act as a motor memory substrate.