Figure 4.

Persistent firing as the mechanism for short-term memory function of the MTL.(A) Persistent firing recorded in monkey hippocampus during a delayed match-to-sample task. Some neurons in the hippocampus continued firing throughout the delay period, when the monkey needed to retain a piece of information presented at the sample phase. (B) In the brain slice preparation of lateral entorhinal cortex, brief (4 s) stimulation can trigger persistent firing supported by the CAN current. This persistent firing could be terminated by a second brief stimulation. Note the very similar time course of spike frequencies in in vivo and in vitro recordings. Single cell level persistent firing in the MTL could support short-term memory tasks. Figure in (A): modified from Hampson et al. (2004). Figure in (B): Tahvildari et al. (2007). Figure was re-drawn from original recording.