University of Texas neuroscientists have demonstrated how populations of nerve cells in the visual cortex adapt to new images, showing that a network of sensory neurons changed its encoding properties to properly represent the environment.

They measured the effects of visual stimulation on the responses of multiple neurons in animals. A brief exposure to a fixed stimulus caused changes in the degree of cooperation between individual neurons and increased the efficiency with which the population of cells encoded information.

Source: University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston News Release