Short-term memory of continuous variables

How does the brain maintain short-term memory in sustained neural and synaptic activity? What are the constraints posed by neural hardware and by noise? We are interested especially in representations of continuous variables such as orientation, eye position, location in space, or accumulated evidence, since this type of representation is particularly sensitive to stochasticity.

Selected publications

Ben-Shushan N. (*), Shaham N. (*), Joshua M., Burak Y.
Fixational drift is driven by diffusive dynamics in central neural circuitry.
* Equal contributors.
Nature Communications 13, 1697 (2022). Lin

Agmon H., Burak Y.
A theory of joint attractor dynamics in the hippocampus and the entorhinal cortex accounts for artificial remapping and grid cell field-to-field variability.
eLife 9, e56894. Lin

Mosheiff N., Burak Y.
Velocity coupling of grid cell modules enables stable embedding of a low dimensional variable in a high dimensional neural attractor.
eLife 8, e48494. LIN

Shaham N, Burak Y.
Slow diffusive dynamics in a chaotic balanced neural network.
PLoS Computational Biology 13, e1005505 (2017). LINK

Burak Y., Fiete I. R.
Fundamental limits on persistent activity in networks of noisy neurons.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 109 17645 (2012). LINK

Burak Y., Fiete I. R.,
Accurate Path Integration in Continuous Attractor Network Models of Grid Cells.
PLoS Computational Biology 5, e1000291 (2009). LINK