New Computer Model Simulates the Development of an Infant's Visual Cortex after Birth

"When newborn babies open their eyes for the first time, they already possess nerve cells specialized in particular stimuli in the visual cortex of their brains - but these nerve cells are not systematically linked with each other," reports Medical News Today. "How do neural networks that react in a particular way to particular features of a stimulus develop over the course of time? In order to better understand the steps of this development and explain the complicated processes of reorganization they involve, an international team of researchers has now developed a computer model that precisely simulates the biological processes. The results of the study by Prof. Dr. Stefan Rotter, Bernstein Center Freiburg (BCF) and Cluster of Excellence BrainLinks-BrainTools of the University of Freiburg, conducted in cooperation with Dr. Claudia Clopath from the Imperial College London, England, have now been published in the journals PLOS Computational Biology and PLOS ONE." Read more.