1,720,964 research outputs found
Modulation of Network Excitability by Persistent Activity: How Working Memory Affects the Response to Incoming Stimuli
No full textPersistent activity and match effects are widely regarded as neuronal correlates of short-term storage and manipulation of information, with the first serving active maintenance and the latter supporting the comparison between memory contents and incoming sensory information. The mechanistic and functional relationship between these two basic neurophysiological signatures of working memory remains elusive. We propose that match signals are generated as a result of transient changes in local network excitability brought about by persistent activity. Neurons more active will be more excitable, and thus more responsive to external inputs. Accordingly, network responses are jointly determined by the incoming stimulus and the ongoing pattern of persistent activity. Using a spiking model network, we show that this mechanism is able to reproduce most of the experimental phenomenology of match effects as exposed by single-cell recordings during delayed-response tasks. The model provides a unified, parsimonious mechanistic account of the main neuronal correlates of working memory, makes several experimentally testable predictions, and demonstrates a new functional role for persistent activity
Retrospective and prospective persistent activity induced by Hebbian learning in a recurrent cortical network
No full textRecordings from cells in the associative cortex of monkeys performing visual working memory tasks link persistent neuronal activity, long-term memory and associative memory. In particular, delayed pair-associate tasks have revealed neuronal correlates of long-term memory of associations between stimuli. Here, a recurrent cortical network model with Hebbian plastic synapses is subjected to the pair-associate protocol. In a first stage, learning leads to the appearance of delay activity, representing individual images ('retrospective' activity). As learning proceeds, the same learning mechanism uses retrospective delay activity together with choice stimulus activity to potentiate synapses connecting neural populations representing associated images. As a result, the neural population corresponding to the pair-associate of the image presented is activated prior to its visual stimulation ('prospective' activity). The probability of appearance of prospective activity is governed by the strength of the inter-population connections, which in turn depends on the frequency of pairings during training. The time course of the transitions from retrospective to prospective activity during the delay period is found to depend on the fraction of slow, N-methyl-D-aspartate-like receptors at excitatory synapses. For fast recurrent excitation, transitions are abrupt; slow recurrent excitation renders transitions gradual. Both scenarios lead to a gradual rise of delay activity when averaged over many trials, because of the stochastic nature of the transitions. The model reproduces most of the neuro-physiological data obtained during such tasks, makes experimentally testable predictions and demonstrates how persistent activity (working memory) brings about the learning of long-term associations
On the relationship between persistent delay activity, repetition enhancement and priming
No full textHuman efficiency in processing incoming stimuli (in terms of speed and/or accuracy) is typically enhanced by previous exposure to the same, or closely related stimuli-a phenomenon referred to as priming. In spite of the large body of knowledge accumulated in behavioral studies about the conditions conducive to priming, and its relationship with other forms of memory, the underlying neuronal correlates of priming are still under debate. The idea has repeatedly been advanced that a major neuronal mechanism supporting behaviorally-expressed priming is repetition suppression, a widespread reduction of spiking activity upon stimulus repetition which has been routinely exposed by single-unit recordings in non-human primates performing delayed-response, as well as passive fixation tasks. This proposal is mainly motivated by the observation that, in human fMRI studies, priming is associated to a significant reduction of the BOLD signal (widely interpreted as a proxy of the level of spiking activity) upon stimulus repetition. Here, we critically re-examine a large part of the electrophysiological literature on repetition suppression in non-human primates and find that repetition suppression is systematically accompanied by stimulus-selective delay period activity, together with repetition enhancement, an increase of spiking activity upon stimulus repetition in small neuronal populations. We argue that repetition enhancement constitutes a more viable candidate for a putative neuronal substrate of priming, and propose a minimal framework that links together, mechanistically and functionally, repetition suppression, stimulus-selective delay activity and repetition enhancement
In-vivo study of coupled neural/synaptic dynamics in an autonomously learning neural network
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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