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Synaptic scaling
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<p>In <a href="/facts/Neuroscience/o5RV8Cas">neuroscience</a>, synaptic scaling (or homeostatic scaling) is a form of <a href="/facts/Homeostatic_plasticity/btAFVSFI">homeostatic plasticity</a>, in which the brain responds to chronically elevated activity in a neural circuit with <a href="/facts/Negative_feedback/G9byVgpN">negative feedback</a>, allowing individual <a href="/facts/Neuron/G7CyTVdH">neurons</a> to reduce their overall <a href="/facts/Action_potential/Sz8yCRqx">action potential</a> firing rate. Where <a href="/facts/Hebbian_theory/Mmtd6Dzt">Hebbian plasticity</a> mechanisms modify neural <a href="/facts/Synapse/vdMRJCUn">synaptic connections</a> selectively, synaptic scaling normalizes all neural synaptic connections by decreasing the strength of each synapse by the same factor (multiplicative change), so that the relative synaptic weighting of each synapse is preserved. </p>