Current Opinion in Neurobiology | 2021
From synapse to network: models of information storage and retrieval in neural circuits
Abstract
The mechanisms of information storage and retrieval in brain circuits are still the subject of debate. It is widely believed that information is stored at least in part through changes in synaptic connectivity in networks that encode this information\xa0and that these changes lead in turn to modifications of network dynamics, such that the stored information can be retrieved at a later time. Here, we review recent progress in deriving synaptic plasticity rules from experimental data\xa0and in understanding how plasticity rules affect the dynamics of recurrent networks. We show that the dynamics generated by such networks exhibit a large degree of diversity, depending on parameters, similar to experimental observations in\xa0vivo during delayed response tasks.