Abstract
Recent experimental studies suggest that, in cortical microcircuits of the mammalian brain, the majority of neuron-to-neuron connections are realized by multiple synapses. However, it is not known whether such redundant synaptic connections provide any functional benefit. Here, we show that redundant synaptic connections enable near-optimal learning in cooperation with synaptic rewiring. By constructing a simple dendritic neuron model, we demonstrate that with multisynaptic connections, synaptic plasticity approximates a sample-based Bayesian filtering algorithm known as particle filtering, and wiring plasticity implements its resampling process. Applying the proposed framework to a detailed single neuron model, we show that the model accounts for many experimental observations, including the dendritic position dependence of spike-timing-dependent plasticity, and the functional synaptic organization on the dendritic tree based on the stimulus selectivity of presynaptic neurons. Our study provides a novel conceptual framework for synaptic plasticity and rewiring.
