doi:10.1016/S0925-2312(01)00548-3
Copyright © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
A model of the IT-PF network in object working memory which includes balanced persistent activity and tuned inhibition*1
Alfonso Renart
, a, Ruben Morenoa, Jaime de la Rochaa, Nestor Pargaa and Edmund T. Rollsb
a Department of Fisica Teorica, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, 28049, Madrid, Spain
b Oxford University, Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford OX1 3UD, UK
Available online 31 May 2001.
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Abstract
The properties of cells in the prefrontal cortex and inferotemporal cortex recorded in monkeys performing delayed matching-to-sample tasks with intervening visual stimuli and memory guided attention tasks are reproduced by means of a model in which two networks of leaky integrate-and-fire neurons representing the two cortical areas interact reciprocally. Each of the networks is organized in micro-columns (M-Cs) which leads naturally to a dynamic balance between excitation and inhibition within each M-C so that realistic cortical spiking statistics (low firing rates with higher or equal to one CVs) are obtained.
Author Keywords: Working memory; Visual search; Balanced networks; Persistent activity; Competitive interactions
Fig. 1. DMS task with an intervening stimulus in the IT (top) and PF (bottom) networks. Thick and thin lines represent PSTHs of the excitatory sub-population of the M-Cs which are selective for the sample stimulus A and the intervening stimulus B, respectively. The PSTHs are obtained by generating Poisson trains with instantaneous firing rates as predicted by the model. This is justified since the CV in both sub-populations remains within the range 1–1.2 the whole trial (data not shown in the figure).
Fig. 2. Visual search experiment. The thick line represents the instantaneous mean firing rate of a sub-population of cells when the stimulus to which the respond (good stimulus) is presented as the cue in the trial. The thin line represents the same thing when an ineffective (poor) stimulus is presented as cue. Note the large suppression in response to the array in the IT module when the cue is the poor stimulus. This is due to the large competition between representations present in the M-C network.