Short-term memory by distributed neural network oscillators in a simple nervous system.

ABSTRACT: Short-term memory allows an animal to gather sensory evidence over time, integrate it with evolving internal state, and make informed decisions about when and how to act at a later time. The implementation of short-term memory by brains remains an outstanding mystery. Simpler animals such as the microscopic nematode C. elegans present the opportunity to understand, at a deep mechanistic level, how cognitive functions such as short-term memory are implemented by biological neural networks. We first establish that C. elegans can remember recent sensory experience to make discrete, informed turns for chemotaxis. Then, using a closed-loop virtual-reality system combining whole-brain imaging and targeted optogenetic neural perturbation, we find that this memory is held in the relative phase of

SUBMITTER: Dunn RL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12829590 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature