Courses – Neuromatch

Climate Science – Neuromatch

Engrams of Fast Learning

Fast learning designates the behavioral and neuronal mechanisms underlying the acquisition of a long-term memory trace after a unique and brief experience. As such it is opposed to incremental, slower reinforcement or procedural learning requiring repetitive training. This learning process, found in most animal species, exists in a large spectrum of natural behaviors, such as one-shot associative, spatial, or perceptual learning, and is a core principle of human episodic memory. We review here the neuronal and synaptic long-term changes associated with fast learning in mammals and discuss some hypotheses related to their underlying mechanisms. We first describe the variety of behavioral paradigms used to test fast learning memories: those preferentially involve a single and brief (from few hundred milliseconds to few minutes) exposures to salient stimuli, sufficient to trigger a long-lasting memory trace and new adaptive responses. We then focus on neuronal activity patterns observed during fast learning and the emergence of long-term selective responses, before documenting the physiological correlates of fast learning. In the search for the engrams of fast learning, a growing body of evidence highlights long-term changes in gene expression, structural, intrinsic, and synaptic plasticities. Finally, we discuss the potential role of the sparse and bursting nature of neuronal activity observed during the fast learning, especially in the induction plasticity mechanisms leadin...

Editorial Policies

Hundreds of Christians begin 240-hour climate change protest outside Parliament

Activists will swap in and out every few hours to ensure a round-the-clock presence.

Taking Media Out of the Market

The recent spate of job losses in journalism make evident the need for systemic alternatives to commercial media. Tweaking market mechanisms and scrambling for new business models is futile when the…

Single session taking ¿too much? RAM

Hi everybody, I am a new user of the AllenSDK. I would like to start using this dataset with my students in a course. However, I’m facing problems when loading the data. I followed the basic tutorials and downloaded the data corresponding to a session. However, I’m unable to operate with it. When I try to call any of the functions, my laptop goes out of RAM memory. #Download and load of the session goes well, no problem. Takes a few seconds. session_id = 798911424 oursession = cache.get_sess...