There is some evidence that the wiring between the cortex and the thalamus—both structures that emerged alongside each other in early vertebrates—are always measuring the level of novelty between incoming sensory data through the thalamus and the patterns represented in the cortex. If there is a match, then no learning is allowed, hence noisy inputs don’t interfere with existing learned patterns. However, if there is a mismatch—if an incoming pattern is sufficiently new—then this triggers a process of neuromodulator release, which triggers changes in synaptic connections in the cortex,
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