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Science 20 September 2002:
Vol. 297. no. 5589, p. 1953
DOI: 10.1126/science.297.5589.1953j
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The coding, storage, and reactivation of memories at the systems scale (for example, a reaching movement cued by a visual stimulus) has been thought to involve the association of neural firing patterns across the different brain regions that subserve the various functions, such as visual and motor processing. Hoffman and McNaughton (p. 2070) have recorded simultaneously the activity of neural ensembles in four parts of the monkey brain throughout a reaching task. The distributed and correlated activity that occurred during the reaching movement can be detected in three of these regions (in the motor, somatosensory, and parietal cortices), but not in the prefrontal cortex, during a post-task rest period. These findings support the idea that concurrent network activity is the neural representation of a memory.

Figure 2
CREDIT: HOFFMAN AND MCNAUGHTON




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