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Neural mechanisms underlying long-term working memory are unknown

Determine the neural mechanisms that support long-term working memory on the scale of hours in the brain, including assessing whether spike-timing dependent plasticity driven by 10–40 Hz activity can account for persistent engrams underlying this extended timescale.

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Background

The paper distinguishes between short working memory maintained by cortical traveling waves over seconds and long-term working memory spanning hours, which enables complex cognitive tasks such as recalling lectures or reading.

While the authors propose spike-timing dependent plasticity (STDP) as a plausible candidate mechanism, they explicitly state that the neural basis for this longer timescale remains unknown and suggest that traveling waves at 10–40 Hz could induce temporary engrams via STDP.

References

The neural mechanisms responsible for this long time scale are not known, but a good candidate is spike-timing dependent plasticity (STDP), which depends on the relative timing between presynaptic inputs and postsynaptic spikes133 when paired at 10-40. Hz.

— A Spacetime Perspective on Dynamical Computation in Neural Information Processing Systems (2409.13669 - Keller et al., 20 Sep 2024) in Discussion, page 18/28