Functional prefrontal cortical circuitry for visuospatial working memory formation: A computational model

摘要

Tuned activity of the prefrontal cortical neurons sustained during the delay period is a neuronal substrate for working memory in the experimental protocol of a working memory task. This study addresses the question as to how this tuned activity is formed and maintained in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) by means of computer simulations of the dynamics of a model PFC circuit. Three factors are suggested to be crucial the cortical amplification of the activity due to the excitatory closed-loop circuitry, the suppression of excessive excitation by the “parallel” inhibition, and the sharpening of the activity profile by the “anti-parallel” inhibi- tion.