Dendritic Spine Plasticity Simulator

This simulation models activity-dependent structural plasticity of dendritic spines — the small protrusions on a neuron's dendrite where most excitatory synapses form. A segment of dendrite carries dozens of candidate synaptic sites, each tracking a calcium-coincidence signal from correlated pre- and post-synaptic activity that drives a threshold plasticity rule: enough correlated activity potentiates and stabilizes a spine into a large "mushroom" head, too little depresses and eventually eliminates it, and bare sites stochastically sprout short-lived filopodia that either mature into new spines or retract. Adjust spike coherence, the potentiation threshold and the structural exploration rate to watch spine density, mean volume and the stable fraction shift in real time — the same push-and-pull between growth and pruning that underlies learning, memory consolidation and recovery from injury.