During slow-wave sleep, the cortex is decoupled from external inputs, and can be devoted to consolidating previously acquired labile memories into stable memories. Recently, memory replay has been demonstrated during sleep, and associated with characteristic oscillations, giving rise to the hypothesis that these may form the critical neural substrate of memory consolidation. However, these studies have mainly focused on the rat hippocampus; while replay has also been demonstrated in other structures and species, evidence remains sparse, especially concerning the specific interactions between thalamic, hippocampal and cortical networks which subserve sleep dependent consolidation of memory. We propose to address these questions using a multidisciplinary approach that combines experimental studies of animal and human electrophysiology with large-scale anatomically realistic network models of the thalamo-cortico-hippocampal system. This collaborative project that isawarded by grant from the Office of Naval Research involves our laboratory as well as laboratories of Dr. Eric Halgren (UCSD), Dr. Terrence Sejnowski (Salk Institute), Dr. Sydney Cash (MGH), Dr. Jean-Marc Fellous (Univ of Arizona) and Dr. Nikolai Rulkov (UCSD). Read more at UCRToday and the
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