8:30 AM-9:20 AM
Kaoli (Salon 5)
Chair: Robert M. Miura, University of British Columbia, Canada
Episodic memory can be expressed as a memory of causal sequence of individually experienced events in daily life. We assume the existence of neural correlates to this cognitive behavior. In this respect, the hippocampal formation is a responsible organ for episodic memory. Using the concepts of chaotic dynamical systems, we present an interpretation of dynamic neural activity found in the hippocampus. The discovery of chaotic itinerancy in high-dimensional dynamical systems with and without a noise term has motivated a new interpretation of this dynamic neural activity, cast in terms of the high-dimensional transitory dynamics among "exotic" attractors. We propose a new coding scheme of information in chaos-driven contraction systems (which is a kind of skew product transformations) we refer to as Cantor coding. Since these systems are found in the hippocampal formation, the proposed coding scheme should be of biological significance. Based on these intensive studies, a hypothesis regarding the formation of episodic memory is given.
Ichiro Tsuda