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Synaptic learning rules for sequence learning

2021; eLife Sciences Publications Ltd; Volume: 10; Linguagem: Inglês

10.7554/elife.67171

2050-084X

Eric T. Reifenstein, Ikhwan Bin Khalid, Richard Kempter,

Neuroscience and Neuropharmacology Research

Remembering the temporal order of a sequence of events is a task easily performed by humans in everyday life, but the underlying neuronal mechanisms are unclear. This problem is particularly intriguing as human behavior often proceeds on a time scale of seconds, which is in stark contrast to the much faster millisecond time-scale of neuronal processing in our brains. One long-held hypothesis in sequence learning suggests that a particular temporal fine-structure of neuronal activity — termed ‘phase precession’ — enables the compression of slow behavioral sequences down to the fast time scale of the induction of synaptic plasticity. Using mathematical analysis and computer simulations, we find that — for short enough synaptic learning windows — phase precession can improve temporal-order learning tremendously and that the asymmetric part of the synaptic learning window is essential for temporal-order learning. To test these predictions, we suggest experiments that selectively alter phase precession or the learning window and evaluate memory of temporal order.