title: Improvement and impairment of visually guided behavior through LTP- and LTD-like exposure-based visual learning.
abstract: Cellular studies have focused on long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD) to understand requirements for persistent changes in synaptic connections. Whereas LTP is induced through high-frequency intermittent stimulation, low-frequency stimulation evokes LTD. Because of the ubiquitous efficacy of these protocols, they are considered fundamental mechanisms underlying learning. Here we adapted LTP/LTD-like protocols to visual stimulation to alter human visually guided behavior. In a change-detection task, participants reported luminance changes against distracting orientation changes. Subsequently, they were exposed to passive visual high- or low-frequency stimulation of either the relevant luminance or irrelevant orientation feature. LTP-like high-frequency protocols using luminance improved ability to detect luminance changes, whereas low-frequency LTD-like stimulation impaired performance. In contrast, LTP-like exposure of the irrelevant orientation feature impaired performance, whereas LTD-like orientation stimulation improved it. LTP-like effects were present for 10 days, whereas LTD-like effects lasted for a shorter period of time. Our data demonstrate that instead of electrically stimulating synapses, selective behavioral changes are evoked in humans by using equivalently timed visual stimulation, suggesting that both LTD- and LTP-like protocols control human behavior but that the direction of changes is determined by the feature incorporated into the stimulation protocol.
authors.affiliation: Abteilung Biopsychologie, Institut für Kognitive Neurowissenschaft, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 44780 Bochum, Germany. christian.beste@rub.de
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Beste
authors.forename: Edmund
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Wascher
authors.forename: Onur
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Güntürkün
authors.forename: Hubert R
authors.initials: HR
authors.lastname: Dinse
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D017774:Long-Term Potentiation / Q000502:physiology*; D036881:Long-Term Synaptic Depression / Q000502:physiology*; D009473:Neuronal Plasticity / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D013569:Synapses / Q000502:physiology*; D014785:Vision, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*