title: Fast-forward playback of recent memory sequences in prefrontal cortex during sleep.
abstract: As previously shown in the hippocampus and other brain areas, patterns of firing-rate correlations between neurons in the rat medial prefrontal cortex during a repetitive sequence task were preserved during subsequent sleep, suggesting that waking patterns are reactivated. We found that, during sleep, reactivation of spatiotemporal patterns was coherent across the network and compressed in time by a factor of 6 to 7. Thus, when behavioral constraints are removed, the brain's intrinsic processing speed may be much faster than it is in real time. Given recent evidence implicating the medial prefrontal cortex in retrieval of long-term memories, the observed replay may play a role in the process of memory consolidation.
authors.affiliation: Arizona Research Laboratories Division of Neural Systems, Memory and Aging, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85724-5115, USA.
authors.forename: David R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Euston
authors.forename: Masami
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tatsuno
authors.forename: Bruce L
authors.initials: BL
authors.lastname: McNaughton
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D051381:Rats; D011916:Rats, Inbred F344; D011930:Reaction Time; D012890:Sleep / Q000502:physiology*