Putting plasticity in its place

Here, Bush et al. present a neural network model describing how a cognitive map based on empirical findings from hippocampal electrophysiology could function in order to encode space and enable sequence learning. The biasing of asymmetric connection weights toward the last direction of motion enables the encoding of recent trajectories or episodes. [...]the requirements for spatial encoding and sequence learning can be fulfilled simultaneously. The model goes some way to supporting in vivo and in vitro data demonstrating the role of synaptic plasticity within the of development of the cognitive map and the encoding of episodic memory; it also prompts a number of predictions as to when and where plasticity may be induced during these processes (Sadowski et al., 2011).