Abstract
Acetylcholine plays an important role in cognitive function, as shown by pharmacological manipulations that impact working memory, attention, episodic memory, and spatial memory function. Acetylcholine also shows striking modulatory influences on the cellular physiology of hippocampal and cortical neurons. Modeling of neural circuits provides a framework for understanding how the cognitive functions may arise from the influence of acetylcholine on neural and network dynamics. We review the influences of cholinergic manipulations on behavioral performance in working memory, attention, episodic memory, and spatial memory tasks, the physiological effects of acetylcholine on neural and circuit dynamics, and the computational models that provide insight into the functional relationships between the physiology and behavior. Specifically, we discuss the important role of acetylcholine in governing mechanisms of active maintenance in working memory tasks and in regulating network dynamics important for effective processing of stimuli in attention and episodic memory tasks. We also propose that theta rhythm plays a crucial role as an intermediary between the physiological influences of acetylcholine and behavior in episodic and spatial memory tasks. We conclude with a synthesis of the existing modeling work and highlight future directions that are likely to be rewarding given the existing state of the literature for both empiricists and modelers.
Highlights
Acetylcholine has a broad range of neuromodulatory influences on the cellular properties of hippocampal and cortical neurons and, as a result, on neural information processing important for behavior
We address the role of acetylcholine in working memory, attention, episodic memory, and spatial memory in turn as understood from experimental data and computational modeling
Sarter and colleagues (2003) point out, that the animal subjects of these experiments are typically over trained and are highly familiar with the stimuli and task demands. They suggest that little attentional effort is required to perform these tasks. Consistent with this argument, memory deficits were observed, for example, when novel stimuli were used in a recognition memory task following local infusions of scopolamine into perirhinal cortex in monkeys (Tang et al, 1997) and in recognition studies of novel objects or delayed non-match to sample with novel odors in rats (McGaughy et al, 2005; Winters and Bussey, 2005)
Summary
Cholinergic modulation of cognitive processing: insights drawn from computational models. Acetylcholine plays an important role in cognitive function, as shown by pharmacological manipulations that impact working memory, attention, episodic memory, and spatial memory function. Modeling of neural circuits provides a framework for understanding how the cognitive functions may arise from the influence of acetylcholine on neural and network dynamics. We review the influences of cholinergic manipulations on behavioral performance in working memory, attention, episodic memory, and spatial memory tasks, the physiological effects of acetylcholine on neural and circuit dynamics, and the computational models that provide insight into the functional relationships between the physiology and behavior. We discuss the important role of acetylcholine in governing mechanisms of active maintenance in working memory tasks and in regulating network dynamics important for effective processing of stimuli in attention and episodic memory tasks.
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