The good people at the Centre for Philosophy of Memory are holding a workshop on causation in memory.

Do memory traces exist? How would / do they work? What about reconstructing memories? What do we need in order to remember something?

Excellent speakers.

No registration required.

FREE access via Zoom!!!

https://phil-mem.org/events/2023-causation.php

#philosophy #PhilosophyOfMemory #Causation #MemoryTraces #UnversiteGrenobleAlps #Engram #Memory #OnlineWorkshop

Science fiction is just a checklist now. Happy friday. #neuroscience #science #ai #engram #gpt4

Examining the #engram #encoding specificity #hypothesis in #mice
#neuroscience
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2023.03.007

This cool paper from Yuste lab takes advantages optogenetics and paired patch clamp-recordings ex vivo to study the formation of new neural ensembles.

20 min after paired optogenetic or electrical stimulation they noticed a robust increases in the firing rate in newly formed neural ensembles. These changes in neuronal firing were due to changes in membrane resistance and firing threshold, but surprisingly not LTP.

The authors propose that such increase in excitability, (unlike post-LTP increase in excitability in other experimental condition), would be particularly relevant for low current injections generated by weak inputs. This would change the gain of neuronal communication within newly formed ensembles.

This finfding could have important implication in the formation of new neural ensembles such as those involved in memories #engram, as they may change the probability for neuron firing together to undergo LTP.

So far, safe to say that, as Donald Hebb wouldn’t have bother to say : 'neurons that fire together, fire together'.

https://elifesciences.org/articles/77470