Self-healing codes: How stable neural populations can track continually reconfiguring neural representations

Abstract

Significance The brain is capable of adapting while maintaining stable long-term memories and learned skills. Recent experiments show that neural responses are highly plastic in some circuits, while other circuits maintain consistent responses over time, raising the question of how these circuits interact coherently. We show how simple, biologically motivated Hebbian and homeostatic mechanisms in single neurons can allow circuits with fixed responses to continuously track a plastic, changing representation without reference to an external learning signal.