decide well if these two things fire together often i want to update my weight very heavily in response to that okay so if the a is very high that means the connection responds very thoroughly to when the two neurons fire together that is not the same as to say that connection should always be very strong it's dependent on the input so only when this quantity is high should the network or should the weight be updated and the a parameter modulates how well it's updated or how um how how strongly it's updated it can