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University of Plymouth | Centre for Theoret. and Comput. Neuroscience | Home   

Neural Assemblies

I have been modeling aspects of Hebbian Cell Assemblies for many years in the context of associative memories. Below you find a selection of related publications. Wennekers and Palm (2000) might give a first overview.

Cell assemblies have been introduced by Donald Hebb with the intention of providing a functional and at the same time structural model for cortical processes and neuronal representations of external events (Donald Hebb, The Organisation of Behavior, 1949). According to Hebb's ideas, stimuli, objects, things, but also more abstract entities like concepts, contextual relations and so on are thought of being represented in the brain by simultaneous activation of large groups of neurons, which are connected by relatively numerous and/or strong mutual excitatory synapses.

The assembly concept also proposes a simple mechanism for long term memory formation, ie. the formation of new assemblies in cortical tissue under the influence of electrical activity. Learning is believed to be expressed in activity-dependend changes of synaptic efficacies, the nowadays widely known `Hebbian learning rules'.

Selected References

• Sommer, F.; Wennekers, T.:
  Synfire chains with conductance-based neurons: internal timing and coordination with timed input.
  Neurocomputing, in press.
  PDF File (264kBytes)
  


• Wennekers,T.;  Sommer, F.;  and Aertsen, A. (editors):
  Neuronal Assemblies.
  Special Issue of Theory in Biosciences 122, 1-104, 2003.


• Sommer, F.T. and Wennekers, T.:
  Associative Memory in networks of spiking neurons.
  Neural Networks 14 (6-7), 825-834, 2001.
  Gnuzipped PostScript File (183kBytes)


• Wennekers, Th.; Palm, G.:
  Cell Assemblies, Associative Memory and Temporal Structure in Brain Signals.
  In: Miller, R. (ed.) Time and the Brain. Series: CABR: Conceptual Advances in Brain Research, vol. 3, pp. 251-273, Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000.
  Gnuzipped PostScript File (132kBytes)


• Wennekers, T. and Sommer, F.T.:
  Gamma-oscillations support optimal retrieval in associative memories of two-compartment neurons.
  Neurocomputing 26-7, 573-578, 1999.
  (Proceedings of the Computational Neuroscience Meeting, CNS98, Santa Barbara, CA, July 25-30, 1998.)
  PDF File (119 kBytes)


• Bibbig, A., Wennekers, Th., Palm, G.:
  Neural Network Model of the Cortico-Hippocampal Interplay and the Representation of Contexts.
  Behavioral and Brain Research 66, 169-175, 1995.
  PDF File (423kBytes)

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