SoftwareSynapseCreation

In the brain, synapse weights can be changed in milliseconds. On the other hand, creating new synapses is very slow—observed over periods of hours or days.

In the Brain Simulator, creating a new synapse is only slightly slower than changing the weight of an existing synapse. Although new synapses can only be added rapidly by Modules, this eliminates the need for huge numbers of synapses with near-zero weights which are in place in the brain as placeholders waiting for their weights to be increased so they can be significant.

Once again, the number of synapses required for a learning function in the Brain Simulator is much smaller than the number of synapses observed in biological neurons.