Topic: Recurrent Neural Network Models

Spike timing relative to theta phase has been shown to mediate spatial and non-spatial information processing in medial temporal lobe (MTL) regions including hippocampus [1,2,3]. A prominent theory suggests that neural activity at different phases of theta oscillations encodes the serial order of items within short-term memory [4]. Based on recordings of spiking activity and local field potentials (LFPs) of epilepsy patients performing a multi-item sequential memory task, we show phase-dependent spiking during the delay, with preferred phases that were related to stimulus position within the s

Many behaviors demand a balance between exploitation, which requires reliability, and exploration, which involves flexibility. In cortical circuits, much work has emphasized how attractor dynamics generate reliable behavior through the convergence of a network to specialized activity patterns for specific decisions and actions1. Other work has emphasized how cortical activity exhibits variability across trials of a behavior, which could in principle support flexibility in actions2. Here, through multi-area calcium imaging and recurrent neural network models, we propose that cortical activity f