Topic: theta

Zoe has developed an open-source tool PhaSER, which allows her to perform real-time oscillatory phase estimation and apply optogenetic manipulations at precise phases of hippocampal theta during high-density electrophysiological recordings in head-fixed mice while they navigate a virtual environment. The precise timing of single-unit spiking relative to network-wide oscillations (i.e., phase locking) has long been thought to maintain excitatory-inhibitory homeostasis and coordinate cognitive processes, but due to intense experimental demands, the causal influence of this phenomenon has never b

Experimental evidence suggests that the brain is able to encode memories in the phase of ongoing low-frequency oscillations. Recently, trainable recurrent neural networks (RNNs) have emerged as promising models of how neural circuits process information. However, short-term memory maintenance in these networks has mostly been implemented through static attractors. Thus, it remains unclear if and how RNNs can encode memories in the relative phase of oscillations. Here we show that such phase-dependent coding can arise through the training of RNNs on memory tasks. We characterize how the emerg