Topic: Hippocampal ripples

Liset de la Prida discusses hippocampal sharp-wave ripples and their relationship to replay and memory. The conversation connects different ripple patterns and neuron types to population activity, asking how particular cells help shape the lower-dimensional dynamics used to describe neural computation.

50 years ago it was found that sleep somehow made memories better and more permanent, but neither sleep nor memory researchers knew enough about sleep and memory to devise robust, effective tests. Today the fields of sleep and memory have grown and what is now understood is astounding. Still, great mysteries remain. What is the functional difference between the subtly different slow oscillation vs the slow wave of sleep and do they really have opposite memory consolidation effects? How do short spindles (e.g. <0.5 s as in schizophrenia) differ in function from longer ones and are longer spindl