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Neurocomputational models of working memory

Abstract

During working memory tasks, the firing rates of single neurons recorded in behaving monkeys remain elevated without external cues. Modeling studies have explored different mechanisms that could underlie this selective persistent activity, including recurrent excitation within cell assemblies, synfire chains and single-cell bistability. The models show how sustained activity can be stable in the presence of noise and distractors, how different synaptic and voltage-gated conductances contribute to persistent activity, how neuromodulation could influence its robustness, how completely novel items could be maintained, and how continuous attractor states might be achieved. More work is needed to address the full repertoire of neural dynamics observed during working memory tasks.

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Figure 1: Delay-period activity recorded in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in vivo.
Figure 2: A firing rate model28,30,31,34 of delay-period activity in networks of PFC neurons.
Figure 3: (Asynchronous) delay activity at physiologically plausible firing rates is not stable if excitatory synapses are too fast.
Figure 4: Maintenance of selective working memory by NMDA-receptor-induced cellular bistability.

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Acknowledgements

D.D. was funded through a research stipend from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DU 354/1-1). J.K.S and T.J.S. were supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Thanks to Emilio Salinas, Paul Tiesinga, Sabine Windmann and Kechen Zhang for comments on the manuscript.

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Durstewitz, D., Seamans, J. & Sejnowski, T. Neurocomputational models of working memory. Nat Neurosci 3 (Suppl 11), 1184–1191 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/81460

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