Methodological Considerations on the Use of Template Matching to Study Long-Lasting Memory Trace Replay

By Masami Tatsuno, Peter Lipa, Bruce L. McNaughton. 2006

90 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Replay of behaviorally induced neural activity patterns during subsequent sleep has been suggested to play an important role in memory consolidation. Many previous studies, mostly involving familiar experiences, suggest that such reactivation occurs, but decays quickly (∼1 h). Recently, however, long-lasting (up to ∼48 h) “reverberation” of neural activity patterns induced by a novel experience was reported on the basis of a template-matching analysis. Because detection and quantification of memory-trace replay depends critically on analysis methods, we investigated the statistical properties of the template-matching method and analyzed rodent neural ensemble activity patterns after a novel experience. For comparison, we also analyzed the same data with an independent analysis technique, the explained variance method. Contrary to the recent report, we did not observe significant long-lasting reverberation using either the template matching or the explained variance approaches. The latter, however, did reveal short-lasting reactivation in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. In addition, detailed analysis of the template-matching method shows that, in the present study, coarse mean firing rate differences among neurons, but not fine temporal spike structures, dominate the results of template matching. Most importantly, it is also demonstrated that partial comparisons of template-matching correlations, such as used in the recent paper, may lead to erroneous conclusions. These investigations indicate that the outcome of template-matching analysis is very sensitive to the conditions of how it is applied, and should be interpreted cautiously, and that the existence of long-lasting reverberation after a novel experience requires additional verification.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience

In Cognitive Neuroscience

Citations in the corpus

Replay in Deep Learning: Current Approaches and Missing Biological Elements (2021, neutral): “The decline in replay of recent experiences was shown to occur relatively fast—within a matter of hours—in hippocampus and prefrontal cortex (Kudrimoti et al., 1999; Tatsuno, Lipa, & McNaughton, 2006).”
The reorganization and reactivation of hippocampal maps predict spatial memory performance (2010, unknown): “…that may reflect exposures prior to learning or baseline correlations we used a partial correlation to assess reactivation of place-related waking patterns, correlating learning-related PFS with rest cofiring after learning while controlling for rest cofiring before learning 26 , 49 , 50 .”
New experiences enhance coordinated neural activity in the hippocampus. (2008, unknown): “, 1999; Lee and Wilson, 2002; Foster and Wilson, 2006) or persistent activity (Ribeiro et al., 2004; Tatsuno et al., 2006) following a novel experience.”
Sleep-Dependent Reactivation of Ensembles in Motor Cortex Promotes Skill Consolidation (2015, methodology): “While largely consistent with a body of work demonstrating the involvement of fast spindles in motor learning [10,11,51], this was quite distinct from what had been observed across the two previous studies demonstrating cortical reactivation in rodents [29,50].”
Neural ensemble reactivation in rapid eye movement and slow-wave sleep coordinate with muscle activity to promote rapid motor skill learning (2020, methodology): “Activation in Rest 2 SWS was strongest immediately following the task and decreased significantly within the first hour following the task (electronic supplementary material, figure S5), which is consistent with the previously observed time course of memory reactivation in rat medial prefrontal cort”
Hippocampus Leads Ventral Striatum in Replay of Place-Reward Information (2009, methodology): “The assessment of covariation in firing rates and reactivation within an experimental session with the EV method was previously described [23,36, 53,54].”