Department

Neurosurgery; Neurology

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Neurocomputational models hold that sparse distributed coding is the most efficient way for hippocampal neurons to encode episodic memories rapidly. We investigated the representation of episodic memory in hippocampal neurons of nine epilepsy patients undergoing intracranial monitoring as they discriminated between recently studied words (targets) and new words (foils) on a recognition test. On average, single units and multiunits exhibited higher spike counts in response to targets relative to foils, and the size of this effect correlated with behavioral performance. Further analyses of the spike-count distributions revealed that (i) a small percentage of recorded neurons responded to any one target and (ii ) a small percentage of targets elicited a strong response in any one neuron. These findings are consistent with the idea that in the human hippocampus episodic memory is supported by a sparse distributed neural code.

Medical Subject Headings

neurology

Publication Date

2014

Publication Title

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

ISSN

0027-8424

Volume

111

Issue

26

First Page

9621

Last Page

9626

PubMed ID

24979802

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1073/pnas.1408365111

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