STDP-based associative memory formation and retrieval

Abstract

Spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) is a biological process in which the precise order and timing of neuronal spikes affect the degree of synaptic modification. While there has been numerous research focusing on the role of STDP in neural coding, the functional implications of STDP at the macroscopic level in the brain have not been fully explored yet. In this work, we propose a neurodynamical model based on STDP that renders storage and retrieval of a group of associative memories. We showed that the function of STDP at the macroscopic level is to form a "memory plane" in the neural state space which dynamically encodes high dimensional data. We derived the analytic relation between the input, the memory plane, and the induced macroscopic neural oscillations around the memory plane. Such plane produces a limit cycle in reaction to a similar memory cue, which can be used for retrieval of the original input.