Event:

Many experiments provide evidences that, after learning, human and animal memories are very dynamic and changeable. Amongst others, one intriguing and counterintuitive effect is the destabilization of memories by recalling them. In addition, some of these destabilized memories can be ‘rescued’ by sleep-induced consolidation while others not. Up to now, the basic principles underlying these effects are widely unknown. In this talk I will present our theoretical model in which the interaction between the biologically well-established processes of synaptic plasticity and scaling enables the formation of memories or rather Hebbian cell assemblies in neural networks. Remarkably, the dynamics of these cell assemblies are comparable to the intriguing dynamics of human and animal memories described above. Furthermore, I will present our recent results about the usage of cell assemblies to solve nonlinear tasks as, for instance, learning and performing complex motor movements. Thus, this theoretical work serves as a further step to link biological processes on the neuronal scale to behavior.