Topic: disordered systems

Since their introduction as a theoretical concept in the 70es by Amari, ring attractor networks have been a popular tool to explain orientation and space dependence of neural activity. Only recently, there has been an experimental proof that they are actually implemented in the fly's brain (Kim et al. 2017). While these kind of networks are useful to model systems representing only one map, like head-direction systems for example, there is a multitude of maps stored in the hippocampus (cf. panel a of the figure). This extension is taken into account by continuous attractor neural networks (CAN