A Tradeoff Between Accuracy and Flexibility in a Working Memory Circuit Endowed with Slow Feedback Mechanisms.

ABSTRACT: Recent studies have shown that reverberation underlying mnemonic persistent activity must be slow, to ensure the stability of a working memory system and to give rise to long neural transients capable of accumulation of information over time. Is the slower the underlying process, the better? To address this question, we investigated 3 slow biophysical mechanisms that are activity-dependent and prominently present in the prefrontal cortex: Depolarization-induced suppression of inhibition (DSI), calcium-dependent nonspecific cationic current (ICAN), and short-term facilitation. Using a spiking network model for spatial working memory, we found that these processes enhance the memory accuracy by counteracting noise-induced drifts, heterogeneity-induced biases, and distractors. Furthermore, th

SUBMITTER: Pereira J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4585505 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature