Document Type
Poster
Abstract
My research focused on using computational methods to study the effect of sleep on memory. There are many simplifications that we used to break down this hefty question, but two are essential to understand: (1) we modeled a simple network (connection diagram included in poster) that comprised of only about 800 neurons (for reference the human brain contains about 80 billion neurons) and represented the connection between two brain regions the thalamus and the cortex, and (2) we modeled memory as a simple learning rule that strengthened connections between neurons that fired in sequence and weakened connections that pointed in the opposite direction of the firing order. Using these assumptions, we could run an experiment to determine if electrically stimulating the network affected memory.
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Publisher
Gonzaga University
Publication Date
Summer 2025
Keywords
memory consolidation, slow-wave sleep (N3), sleep stimulation
Disciplines
Computational Neuroscience | Neuroscience and Neurobiology | Physics
Recommended Citation
Martinez, Charlie and Fink, Christian, "Learn, Sleep, Remember, Repeat" (2025). Physics Student Scholarship. 2.
https://repository.gonzaga.edu/physicsstudentschol/2
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Research Summary
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Comments
This research was made possible with support from the Gonzaga Science Research Program.