Modeling the dishabituation hierarchy: the role of the primordial hippocampus

Biol Cybern. 1992;67(6):535-44. doi: 10.1007/BF00198760.

Abstract

We present a neural model for the organization and neural dynamics of the medial pallium, the toad's homolog of mammalian hippocampus. A neural mechanism, called cumulative shrinking, is proposed for mapping temporal responses from the anterior thalamus into a form of population coding referenced by spatial positions. Synaptic plasticity is modeled as an interaction of two dynamic processes which simulates acquisition and both short-term and long-term forgetting. The structure of the medial pallium model plus the plasticity model allows us to provide an account of the neural mechanisms of habituation and dishabituation. Computer simulations demonstrate a remarkable match between the model performance and the original experimental data on which the dishabituation hierarchy was based. A set of model predictions is presented, concerning mechanisms of habituation and cellular organization of the medial pallium.

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Computer Simulation
  • Cybernetics
  • Habituation, Psychophysiologic / physiology*
  • Hippocampus / physiology*
  • Models, Neurological*
  • Ranidae