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Timing over Tuning: Overcoming the Shortcomings of a Line Attractor during a Working Memory Task
How the brain stores information about a sensory stimulus in working memory is not completely known. Clues about the mechanisms responsible for working memory can be gleaned by recording from neurons during the performance of a delayed response task. I focus on the data recorded during such an exper...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Public Library of Science
2014
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3907287/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24499929 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003437 |
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author | Drover, Jonathan D. |
author_facet | Drover, Jonathan D. |
author_sort | Drover, Jonathan D. |
collection | PubMed |
description | How the brain stores information about a sensory stimulus in working memory is not completely known. Clues about the mechanisms responsible for working memory can be gleaned by recording from neurons during the performance of a delayed response task. I focus on the data recorded during such an experiment, a classic tactile discrimination task. I describe how the observed variability in the firing rate during a trial suggests that the type of attractor that is responsible for holding the stimulus information is not a fixed-point type attractor. I propose an alternate mechanism to a line attractor that allows the network to hold the value of an analog stimulus variable for the duration of the delay period, but rather than maintain a constant level of activity, the cells' firing rate varies throughout the delay period. I describe how my proposed mechanism offers a substantial advantage over a line attractor: The tuning requirements of cell to cell connections are greatly eased from that of a line attractor. To accommodate a change in the length of the delay period, I show that the network can be altered by changing a single parameter - the timing of an executive signal that originates outside of the network. To demonstrate the mechanism, as well as the tuning benefits, I use a well known model of propagation in neuronal networks. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3907287 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-39072872014-02-04 Timing over Tuning: Overcoming the Shortcomings of a Line Attractor during a Working Memory Task Drover, Jonathan D. PLoS Comput Biol Research Article How the brain stores information about a sensory stimulus in working memory is not completely known. Clues about the mechanisms responsible for working memory can be gleaned by recording from neurons during the performance of a delayed response task. I focus on the data recorded during such an experiment, a classic tactile discrimination task. I describe how the observed variability in the firing rate during a trial suggests that the type of attractor that is responsible for holding the stimulus information is not a fixed-point type attractor. I propose an alternate mechanism to a line attractor that allows the network to hold the value of an analog stimulus variable for the duration of the delay period, but rather than maintain a constant level of activity, the cells' firing rate varies throughout the delay period. I describe how my proposed mechanism offers a substantial advantage over a line attractor: The tuning requirements of cell to cell connections are greatly eased from that of a line attractor. To accommodate a change in the length of the delay period, I show that the network can be altered by changing a single parameter - the timing of an executive signal that originates outside of the network. To demonstrate the mechanism, as well as the tuning benefits, I use a well known model of propagation in neuronal networks. Public Library of Science 2014-01-30 /pmc/articles/PMC3907287/ /pubmed/24499929 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003437 Text en Drover. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Drover, Jonathan D. Timing over Tuning: Overcoming the Shortcomings of a Line Attractor during a Working Memory Task |
title | Timing over Tuning: Overcoming the Shortcomings of a Line Attractor during a Working Memory Task |
title_full | Timing over Tuning: Overcoming the Shortcomings of a Line Attractor during a Working Memory Task |
title_fullStr | Timing over Tuning: Overcoming the Shortcomings of a Line Attractor during a Working Memory Task |
title_full_unstemmed | Timing over Tuning: Overcoming the Shortcomings of a Line Attractor during a Working Memory Task |
title_short | Timing over Tuning: Overcoming the Shortcomings of a Line Attractor during a Working Memory Task |
title_sort | timing over tuning: overcoming the shortcomings of a line attractor during a working memory task |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3907287/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24499929 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003437 |
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