A Novel Whole-Cell Mechanism for Long-Term Memory Enhancement
Figure 4
Contrast-enhancement causes selective memory enhancement.
Cells in the network were arranged in a matrix in which the intensity level corresponds to the change in the number of spikes during memory activation compared to background. Cells that responded to an arbitrary input-X were arranged in T-shape. A. Contrast-enhancement applied to neurons constructing pattern X, substantially increased their response intensity to the input-X, but activity did not spread to neurons out of this pattern (the same neurons are activated before and after contrast enhancement is applied). B. Contrast enhancement of pattern X did not affect the intensity of another memory-pattern induced by a different input, although the two memory-patterns had a considerable overlap (correlation of 0.74). Notice the vague shape of the T pattern. C. The ratio between the number of spikes before and after contrast-enhancement in response to different inputs. Only the response to input-X (red) was considerably enhanced. Pattern #6 is shown in figure 4B.