A temporal record of the past with a spectrum of time constants in the monkey entorhinal cortex
Abstract
Many brain regions, notably the hippocampus, contain a record of the recent past with time cells, neurons that fire in sequence, each at a specific time after a triggering event. The origin of this neural timeline has been unclear. This paper reports a timing signal in the entorhinal cortex (EC), which provides input to the hippocampus. Rather than firing sequentially, all EC neurons activated shortly after a stimulus and then decayed at a variety of rates. Because different neurons decay at different rates, one can reconstruct how far in the past the stimulus was presented by noting which neurons are still active. These results align well with the theoretical proposal that the brain represents the real Laplace transform of the past.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Aug 03, 2020
- Source ID
- 10.1073/pnas.1917197117
Entities
People
- Elizabeth A. Buffalo
- Ian M Bright
- Marc W Howard
- Miriam Meister
- Nathanael A Cruzado
- Zoran Tiganj
Organizations
- Boston University
- Indiana University
- National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering
- National Institute of Mental Health
- National Institutes of Health
- Office of Naval Research Global
- University of Washington
- Washington National Primate Research Center