Abstract
There is evidence of presynaptic modulation of inhibitions on pyramidal neurons in cortical layers 2/3, mediated by muscarinic M2-receptors activated by transient releases of the corticopetal acetylcholine associated with top-down attention. Little is known, however, regarding its system-level consequences and possible implications for cognitive functions. It is possible that, through a temporal modulation of connectivity between neurons, memory traces or the attractor landscape in the cortex might be significantly affected. We present a hypothetical argument on attractor ruins and temporal reconstructions of attractors by top-down attention. In this paper, we discuss the mathematical validity of this scenario with a computer study using a phase neuron model.
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Notes
- 1.
An “ongoing state” is used here to mean primarily layer 2/3 dynamical state of a local cortex with a circumstance where the cortex does not receive external input via layer 4, and also essentially no spike volleys to layer 1 (and probably also layer 6) as related to conscious attention.
- 2.
An attractor ruin (or, quasi-attractor) must have a mechanism for allowing both transition and return to and from a state. A typical example of an attractor ruin is a perturbed structure of the non-classical Milnor attractor [13], which possesses the positive measure of attracting orbits, but may simultaneously possess the property of repelling orbits from itself.
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Acknowledgments
The authors (H.F. and I.T.) were supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas “The study on the neural dynamics for understanding communication in terms of complex hetero systems (No.4103)” (21120002) from The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, Japan. The second author (T.K.) was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Encouragement of Young Scientists (B) (No. 20700215) from The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan. This research was also partially supported by the Aihara Project, the Funding Program for World-Leading Innovative Research and Development on Science and Technology (FIRST) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), initiated by the Council for Science and Technology Policy (CSTP).
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Fujii, H., Kanamaru, T., Aihara, K., Tsuda, I. (2013). Attentional Cholinergic Projections May Induce Transitions of Attractor Landscape via Presynaptic Modulations of Connectivity. In: Yamaguchi, Y. (eds) Advances in Cognitive Neurodynamics (III). Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4792-0_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4792-0_14
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