Check out my neurons getting connected

Seeing a brain as it learns to see

DURHAM, N.C. -- A brain isn't born fully organized. It builds its abilities through experience, making physical connections between neurons and organizing circuits to store and retrieve information in milliseconds for years afterwards.
Now that process has been caught in the act for the first time by a Duke University research team that watched a naïve brain organize itself to interpret images of motion.
"This is the first time that anyone has been able to watch as visual experience selectively shapes the functional properties of individual neurons," said David Fitzpatrick, professor of neurobiology and director of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. "These results emphasize just how important experience is for the early development of brain circuits." The group's findings appear online Oct. 22 in the journal Nature.
[...]