Diversity in neural firing dynamics supports both rigid and learned hippocampal sequences

Abstract

Coding what is known and what is new Do neural activity patterns during sleep reflect the replay of a novel experience or an invariant preexisting dynamic? Grosmark and Buzsáki observed that both familiar and novel aspects of learned information are replayed during synchronous bursts of activity in the hippocampus. Familiarity was encoded by fast-firing less-modifiable neurons that showed rate and sequence correlations that persisted into postlearning sleep. The novel features of an experience were represented by a different set of slowly firing and highly plastic cells. Science , this issue p. 1440