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In a recent experiment, a cell in the human medial temporal lobe (MTL) encoding one sensory stimulus starts to also respond to a second stimulus following a combined experience associating the two. We develop a theoretical model predicting that an assembly of cells with exceptionally high synaptic intraconnectivity can emerge, in response to a particular sensory experience, to encode and abstract that experience. We also show that two such assemblies are modified to increase their intersection after a sensory event that associates the two corresponding stimuli. The main technical tools employed are random graph theory, and Bernoulli approximations. Assembly creation must overcome a computational challenge akin to the Densest K-Subgraph problem, namely selecting, from a large population of randomly and sparsely interconnected cells, a subset with exceptionally high density of interconnections. We identify three mechanisms that help achieve this feat in our model: (1) a simple two-stage randomized algorithm, and (2) the "triangle completion bias" in synaptic connectivity and a "birthday paradox", while (3) the strength of these connections is enhanced through Hebbian plasticity.
@InProceedings{legenstein_et_al:LIPIcs.ITCS.2018.57,
author = {Legenstein, Robert and Maass, Wolfgang and Papadimitriou, Christos H. and Vempala, Santosh S.},
title = {{Long Term Memory and the Densest K-Subgraph Problem}},
booktitle = {9th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2018)},
pages = {57:1--57:15},
series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
ISBN = {978-3-95977-060-6},
ISSN = {1868-8969},
year = {2018},
volume = {94},
editor = {Karlin, Anna R.},
publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
address = {Dagstuhl, Germany},
URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2018.57},
URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-83593},
doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2018.57},
annote = {Keywords: Brain computation, long term memory, assemblies, association}
}