Friction effects on collective mechanisms of short term memory

Short term memory is often correlated with persistent changes in neuronal firing rates in response to transient inputs. This thesis models the persistent maintenance of an analog eye position signal by an oculomotor neural integrator receiving transient eye movement commands. We show analytically how using neurons with multiple bistable dendritic compartments can enhance the robustness of eye fixations to mistuning while reproducing the observed linear relationship between neuronal firing rates and eye position. We calculate the network dynamics and tolerance to mistuning. Finally, we demonstrate that dendritic bistability can improve robustness in a biophysically realistic network of conductance based neurons.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Levine, Joseph H. (Joseph Henry), 1979-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• H. Sebastian Seung.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/27048

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/27048