SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Neural Circuits
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fncir.2025.1636023
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvances in Perceptual Learning: New Directions, Techniques, and ApplicationsView all articles
How perceptual learning rewires brain connectivity: lessons from the visual system in a top-down perspective Authors
Provisionally accepted
- 1Harvard Medical School, Boston, United States
- 2Department of Medicine, National Research Council (CNR), Roma, Italy
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Neural circuits sculpt their structure and modify the strength of their connections to effectively adapt to the external stimuli throughout life. In response to practice and experience, the brain learns to distinguish previously undetectable stimulus features recurring in the external environment. The unconscious acquisition of improved perceptual abilities falls into a form of implicit learning known as perceptual learning. Despite more than a century of multidisciplinary studies, a thorough understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying perceptual learning is still missing. Increasing evidence suggests that the learning process induces a global plastic remodeling across several cortical areas, tuning neural responses to changing environmental claims by reweighting the interaction between bottom-up and top-down information. Here, we will survey classic and novel
Keywords: Perceptual Learning, neural plasticity, Visual Processing, circuit rewiring, Top-down integration
Received: 27 May 2025; Accepted: 11 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Consorti and Sale. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Alessandro Sale, Department of Medicine, National Research Council (CNR), Roma, Italy
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