ERC Advanced Grant · 2023
Dendrite assemblies as the core cortical computation module for continual motor learning
The cortex has the amazing capacity to continuously learn through experience while retaining past memories. But how does the cortical network implement this continual learning while avoiding interference and catastrophic overwriting of prior events? While cell assemblies with simple point neurons are thought to serve as the basic learning and storage units, this model poses major challenges in dynamic environments and lacks experimental support. Relying on strong preliminary results, I here propose a radically different view of learning and storage in the cortex—the dendrite assembly hypothesis—where the relevant memory units are the “hidden layer” of dendritic branches. Namely, each neuron…
From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.