Attractor Dynamics in the Hippocampal Representation of the Local Environment

By Thomas J. Wills, C. Lever, F. Cacucci, Neil Burgess, John O'Keefe. Science, 2005

716 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Memories are thought to be attractor states of neuronal representations, with the hippocampus a likely substrate for context-dependent episodic memories. However, such states have not been directly observed. For example, the hippocampal place cell representation of location was previously found to respond continuously to changes in environmental shape alone. We report that exposure to novel square and circular environments made of different materials creates attractor representations for both shapes: Place cells abruptly and simultaneously switch between representations as environmental shape changes incrementally. This enables study of attractor dynamics in a cognitive representation and may correspond to the formation of distinct contexts in context-dependent memory.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1458c7311edc92550aef772efb0f646c7e845215

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In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience

In Cognitive Neuroscience

Citations in the corpus

The mechanisms for pattern completion and pattern separation in the hippocampus (2013, background): “…completion in the hippocampus contribute to its functions in memory and spatial function (Rolls and Treves, 1998; Nakazawa et al., 2002, 2003; Wills et al., 2005; Rolls and Kesner, 2006; Kesner, 2007, 2013; Leutgeb et al., 2007; McHugh et al., 2007; Hunsaker and Kesner, 2008, 2013; Giocomo…”
Rhythms of the brain (2006, background): “These features should remind us that re-creation or completion of the whole from fragmentary inputs is the hallmark of autoassociative networks (Wills et al., 2005).”
Hippocampal Sharp Waves and Reactivation during Awake States Depend on Repeated Sequential Experience (2006, background): “Such cell assemblies have been directly observed in theta during behavior (Wilson and McNaughton, 1993; Harris et al., 2003; Leutgeb et al., 2005; Wills et al., 2005) and reactivation of those assemblies have been observed during subsequent sleep states (Pavlides and Winson, 1989; Wilson and McNaugh”
Neural Ensembles in CA3 Transiently Encode Paths Forward of the Animal at a Decision Point (2007, background): “Place cells have been shown to consistently disambiguate different environments (Leutgeb et al., 2005; Wills et al., 2005).”
Path integration and the neural basis of the 'cognitive map' (2006, background): “84 ), but it can also occur after substantial changes in cue configuration at a single locatio”
Remembering the past and imagining the future (2007, background): “…can be identified as having different “contexts” requiring hippocampal disambiguation, that is if they elicit “remapped” (Muller, 1996) patterns of place cell firing as occurs rapidly with dramatic multimodal changes (Wills et al., 2005) or more slowly with unimodal changes (Lever et al., 2002).”
Timing and efficacy of transmitter release at mossy fiber synapses in the hippocampal network (2006, neutral): “Experimental evidence for pattern separation is that CA3 cells show abrupt and coordinated place field remapping when the environment is changed to a larger extent [51, 77, 85].”
Progressive transformation of hippocampal neuronal representations in "morphed" environments. (2005, background): “Strong remapping was defined as a difference of at least 0.5 (Wills et al., 2005).”
The hippocampus and memory: insights from spatial processing (2008, background): “Place cells also perform pattern completion and pattern separation , which are indicative of an attractor network”
Temporal encoding of place sequences by hippocampal cell assemblies. (2006, background): “…within the theta cycle would result from the intrinsic oscillatory dynamics of the hippocampal formation in the framework of an attractor dynamical systems model (Tsodyks et al., 1996; Jensen and Lisman, 1996; Wallenstein and Hasselmo, 1997; Samsonovich and McNaughton, 1997; Wills et al., 2005).”