Rapid Cortical Plasticity Supports Long-Term Memory Formation

Published on November 6, 2019

The standard systems consolidation account posits that recently formed memories are initially dependent on the hippocampus and only gradually become instantiated in neocortical networks over a period of weeks to years. However, recent animal and human research has identified rapid formation of cortical engrams at the time of learning that can support hippocampal-independent memories within hours or days. Conditions that promote rapid cortical learning include relatedness to prior knowledge, activation of knowledge in the service of action selection or active discovery, and repeated retrieval.

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