An oscillatory mechanism for multi-level storage in short-term memory

• Published in: Communications biology Vol. 6; no. 1; pp. 829 - 9
• Main Authors: Champion, Kathleen P, Gozel, Olivia, Lankow, Benjamin S, Ermentrout, G Bard, Goldman, Mark S
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Nature Publishing Group 10.08.2023; Nature Publishing Group UK; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: Biology; Brain; Computational neuroscience; Frequency dependence; Memory; Memory, Short-Term; Neurobiology; Neurosciences; Oscillations; Short term memory
• ISSN: 2399-3642; 2399-3642
• DOI: 10.1038/s42003-023-05200-7

Oscillatory activity is commonly observed during the maintenance of information in short-term memory, but its role remains unclear. Non-oscillatory models of short-term memory storage are able to encode stimulus identity through their spatial patterns of activity, but are typically limited to either an all-or-none representation of stimulus amplitude or exhibit a biologically implausible exact-tuning condition. Here we demonstrate a simple mechanism by which oscillatory input enables a circuit to generate persistent or sequential activity that encodes information not only in the spatial pattern of activity, but also in the amplitude of activity. This is accomplished through a phase-locking phenomenon that permits many different amplitudes of persistent activity to be stored without requiring exact tuning of model parameters. Altogether, this work proposes a class of models for the storage of information in working memory, a potential role for brain oscillations, and a dynamical mechanism for maintaining multi-stable neural representations.