Tag Archives: synaptic plasticity

Frontiers in Neurorobotics : special issue

I’m happy that I finally managed to put together a research topic for Frontiers in Neurorobotics.

http://www.frontiersin.org/Neurorobotics/researchtopics/Neural_plasticity_for_rich_and/3107

Deadline for abstract submission (12 September 2014)

Deadline for paper submission (12 January 2015)

If you are interested in contributing, please send me  short email or visit the link above to submit an abstract

Brain Waves Create Archives of Experience and Expectation

This article

@article{harmelech2013JNeuroscience,
Title = {The Day-After Effect: Long Term, Hebbian-Like Restructuring of Resting-State fMRI Patterns Induced by a Single Epoch of Cortical Activation},
Author = {Harmelech, Tai and Preminger, Son and Wertmam, Eliahu and Malach, Rafael},
Journal = {Journal of Neuroscience},
Month = {May},
Number = {22},
Pages = {9488-9497},
Volume = {33},
Year = {2013},
Bdsk-Url-1 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5911-12.2013}
}

featured at
http://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/past-brain-activation-revealed-in-scans#.Uc1PHj6OC1m
and
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201306/brain-waves-create-archives-experience-and-expectation
strongly suggests the existence of long-lasting eligibility traces. The reverberating activity is observed to last up to 24 hours, a significantly longer time span in comparison to the few seconds time constant of the chemical traces  I’ve  modelled in my recent papers:

http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/NECO_a_00419 and

http://www.frontiersin.org/Neurorobotics/10.3389/fnbot.2013.00006/full

Reverberating activity could in effect be a higher order type of trace, and  could prove fundamental in the solution of distal reward problems and learning.