Time scales of memory, learning, and plasticity — TEI-tagged view

Tetzlaff, Kolodziejski, Markelic, Wörgötter · 2012 · neuroscience · doi:10.1007/s00422-012-0529-z · full text at the source · TEI xml · tagged edition · index · concepts · authors
Where this record's text came from. faceted 2026-08 by reading the locally held text (pdftext); every evidence string verified as an exact substring of that text before merging. This is a 'prospect' article, so 'review' is the closest method value; it contains no new data and its claim is a proposed organising framework rather than an empirical result. The 'contradicts' relation to Hebb (1949) is weaker than the label suggests - the paper says the link is 'still under debate' rather than refuting it - and I set replication status to 'contested' for the same reason, since the paper explicitly reports contradictory experimental evidence on the LTP-learning link (Mayford et al. 1996 versus Zamanillo 1999). Table 1's mathematical model catalogue is a substantive part of the contribution that no facet captures. 2026-08-14 and 2026-08-15 schema-0.3 passes: every quote verified as an exact substring of the staged text and anchored at merge time; concept terms verified present; every edge endpoint an existing node.
This record’s own method is review, and the tags below follow from that. A review’s findings, quantities and statistics are things stated IN this paper, and some of them report results obtained elsewhere. 1 tag on this page names the author the result belongs to. Measured across every review in this corpus, 81% of a review’s tags carry no citation at all — most of them are the review speaking. The corpus does not adjudicate the rest: read an unmarked tag as a claim this paper makes, not necessarily one it made first.
Other fields define these differently the same word, defined another way in another discipline
working memory 4 fields · short-term memory 2 fields
Tags on this paper every tag the record carries, whether or not the words occur in the text below — a number is how many papers in the corpus carry that tag; a tag with no number is unique to this paper
working memory27 short-term memory10 long-term memory9 eligibility traces time scale2 review319

Our tag layer for this paper

Cross-disciplinary analysis
content-tags & facets: phenomenon · claim-type · cross-domain-transfer · mechanism · claim-relation · replication-status · limitation — grounded in the full text
phenomenontime scales of memory, learning, and synaptic plasticity— “Psychology and physiology have found and described many different memory mechanisms, and these mechanisms indeed use different time scales.”
claim-typemechanism— “The strategy of the nervous system to overcome these limitations apparently is to use different time scales in the memorization process.”
method — evidence— “In this prospect we review these mechanisms with respect to their time scale and propose relations between mechanisms in learning and memory and their underlying physiological basis.”
mechanismForgetting on finite, graded storage times acts as an implicit compression algorithm, holding down both the capacity needed and the time to retrieve an item— “Hence, the nervous system is implicitly performing an algorithm by means of its finite storage time (i.e., by forgetting meaningless items) to more efficiently store and access data.”mechanisms[0]
mechanismNew memories overwrite and interfere with old ones, which lowers the network's capacity demand but destroys important items - the cost that multiple time scales exist to avoid— “Another possibility is the permanent overwriting or interference with old memories, which in turn reduces the capacity requirements of the network [see, e.g., (Mézard et al. 1986; Sikström 2002) for Hopfield models] but also deletes important memories.”mechanisms[1]
mechanismHebbian potentiation feeds back on itself - a strengthened synapse drives the postsynaptic neuron harder, which strengthens it further - producing runaway weight growth unless a counteracting mechanism is present— “Independently of the interpretation of Hebbian plasticity this mechanism results in divergent dynamics: if an input drives the firing of a postsynaptic neuron, then plasticity potentiates the synaptic weight and, in this way, causes a stronger input drive, which in turn generates more potentiation, and so on.”mechanisms[2]
mechanismAn organism evolves a given memory time scale only if its lifespan and environment exert evolutionary pressure for correlations at that scale— “For example, an organism that lives only for a few weeks will never “feel” the evolutionary pressure to develop long-term memories for planning food harvesting for the winter season.”mechanisms[3]
mechanismSpike-triggered calcium influx into the presynaptic terminal raises release probability (facilitation) while use depletes the vesicle pool (depression), giving synapses a seconds-long memory— “The arrival of spikes at the synapse leads to a calcium influx into the presynaptic terminal and, thus, to an increase in the release probability (synaptic facilitation).”mechanisms[4]
builds-on Martin et al. (2000) four criteria for relating plasticity to learning and memory— “Nevertheless, to guarantee the correctness of these links, all of them must be tested according to the four criteria proposed by Martin et al. (2000) (detectability, mimicry, and anterograde and retrograde alteration).”claim_relations[0]
contradicts Hebb (1949) proposed link between long-term memory and long-term plasticity— “In summary, it is interesting to note that there exist experimental support for links between (1) working memory and activity and (2) long-term memory and structural plasticity, but the very early proposed link between long-term memory and long-term plasticity (Hebb 1949) is still under debate”claim_relations[1]
sensea time scale - THREE DIFFERENT SPANS UNDER ONE EXPRESSION: working memory milliseconds to minutes, short-term memory minutes to days, long-term memory up to what the authors put in scare quotes as 'infinity'; the phrase that organises the whole review denotes a different quantity in each of its three sections— “Whereas the time scale of working memory is from milliseconds to minutes, short-term memory stores items on a time scale of minutes to days”senses[0]
senselong-term memory's upper bound - IN THE AUTHORS' OWN SCARE QUOTES: given as up to 'infinity', with the immediate qualification that it is still under debate how items can be stored for such a long time, so the widest value in the review is the one marked as least settled— “Although the time scale of long-term memory could be up to “infinity,” it is still under debate how items can be stored for such a long time”senses[1]
sensean eligibility trace - A MODELLING DEVICE WITHOUT ITS PHYSIOLOGY: named in 1943 and used in many learning-algorithm approaches to bridge time gaps, while the physiological basis of the longer traces is stated to be unclear, so the algorithms assume a mechanism the review declines to underwrite— “These so-called eligibility traces (Hull 1943; Rall 1967) are used in many approaches [e.g., Sutton (1988); Sutton and Barto (1998); Suri and Schultz (1999); Porr and Wörgötter (2003)] to bridge time gaps in learning algorithms, but the physiological basis of longer traces is unclear”senses[2]
differs inworking memory —contrasted-with→ short-term memory — the span each covers: milliseconds to minutes, versus minutes to days— “Whereas the time scale of working memory is from milliseconds to minutes, short-term memory stores items on a time scale of minutes to days”— “the time scale of working memory is from milliseconds to minutes, short-term memory stores items on a time scale of minutes to days”concept_edges[0]
for which uselimitation — the review's coverage: TO AVOID THIS, ONLY KEY FINDINGS ARE DISCUSSED— “To avoid this, only key findings are discussed.”limitations[0]
for which uselimitation — every mechanism-to-behaviour link the review draws: BECAUSE IT IS NOT CLEAR WHICH MECHANISM IS RESPONSIBLE FOR WHICH BEHAVIOR, WE DISCUSSED POSSIBLE LINKS— “Because it is not clear which mechanism is responsible for which behavior, we discussed possible links.”limitations[1]
for which uselimitation — the set of links the review treats at all: UP TO THIS POINT WE HAVE ONLY DISCUSSED LINKS FOR WHICH THERE IS ALREADY EXPERIMENTAL SUPPORT OR THEORETICAL MODELING— “Up to this point we have only discussed links for which there is already experimental support or theoretical modeling.”limitations[2]
for which uselimitation — any use of 'time scale' across these memory terms: working memory is given a range of milliseconds to minutes and short-term memory one of minutes to days, so the expression names different spans for adjacent categories— “Whereas the time scale of working memory is from milliseconds to minutes, short-term memory stores items on a time scale of minutes to days”limitations[3]
for which uselimitation — any account of memory transfer drawn from this review: the interaction between short- and long-term memory is said to remain unclear, and whether an item must pass through short-term memory first is asked rather than answered— “The interaction between short- and long-term memory remains unclear (McGaugh 2000). Does a memory item have to be stored in short-term memory before it is transferred to longterm memory”limitations[4]
for which uselimitation — any physiological reading of eligibility traces: they are used in many learning-algorithm approaches to bridge time gaps, and the authors state the physiological basis of longer traces is unclear— “These so-called eligibility traces (Hull 1943; Rall 1967) are used in many approaches [e.g., Sutton (1988); Sutton and Barto…limitations[5]
replicationcontested
no type for thisconsolidation → retrieval — THE TWO CANNOT BE SEPARATED IN THIS STUDY - the DESIGN form of the negative relation / No edge type can express it: all eight assert that a relation HOLDS. Recorded here because a confounding statement BOUNDS WHAT THE PAPER'S OWN RESULTS CAN MEAN, and it lives in a methods paragraph where nothing downstream will find it. A memory deficit cannot be attributed to either of the two processes the field distinguishes - so the distinction survives in the vocabulary while being unusable on the data.unhoused_relations[0]
limitationThe review is selective rather than exhaustive; only key findings are discussed for each link.limitations[0]
limitationThe mapping from physiological mechanism to behaviour is not established, so the links presented are possibilities rather than established correspondences.
Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher.
limitations[1]
limitationOnly links with existing experimental or modelling support are treated; missing links are flagged as open questions rather than covered.
Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher.
limitations[2]
limitationThe review's two neighbouring memory categories are given non-overlapping time ranges.
Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher.
limitations[3]
limitationThe ordering between the two categories is stated to be unresolved and posed as a question.
Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher.
limitations[4]
limitationA construct used throughout the learning-algorithm literature has no established physiology for its longer form.
Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher.
limitations[5]
Content tags
content-observations: finding · quantity · variable · definition · key-term — grounded in the full text
findingWorking memory spans milliseconds to minutes, while short-term memory stores items over minutes to days.
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content_tags.findings[0]
findingHaving different storage time scales could avoid the deletion of important information.
Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher.
content_tags.findings[1]
findingRobot experiments show that when different time scales interact, more complex behaviour can be obtained.
Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher.
content_tags.findings[2]
findingCaenorhabditis elegans shows synaptic plasticity but no experience-based structural plasticity.
Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher.
content_tags.findings[3]
findingOf the proposed memory-physiology links, working memory-to-activity and long-term-memory-to-structural-plasticity have experimental support, whereas the classic long-term-memory-to-long-term-plasticity link is still disputed.
Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher.
content_tags.findings[4]
findingSo far, mimicry cannot be experimentally induced.
Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher.
content_tags.findings[5]
findingRats in enriched environments build significantly more dendritic spines than controls.
Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher.
content_tags.findings[6]
findingAdding synaptic scaling with a quadratic weight dependence to a generic plasticity rule can be shown mathematically to stabilise weight development.
Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher.
content_tags.findings[7]
findingStructural plasticity is modelled only computationally because no analytical models of network topology change exist yet.
Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher.
content_tags.findings[8]
findingWhether the exact human forgetting curve is exponential or a power law remains unsettled.
Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher.
content_tags.findings[9]
quantityabout 10 days — how quickly the nervous system's storage capacity would be exhausted if every bit of input were stored
Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher.
content_tags.quantities[0]
quantityfour and seven — the number of items working memory can hold
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content_tags.quantities[1]
quantitytens of milliseconds — the time scale of the postsynaptic potential, the shortest memory-like physiological trace
Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher.
content_tags.quantities[2]
quantityμ = 0.01 corresponds to 100 ms — how the alpha-function time-scale parameter maps onto the filter's temporal duration
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content_tags.quantities[3]
quantityfour — the number of criteria Martin et al. proposed for establishing that plasticity underlies learning and memory (detectability, mimicry, anterograde and retrograde alteration)
Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher.
content_tags.quantities[4]
quantitymilliseconds to seconds — the time scale of short-term plasticity
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content_tags.quantities[5]
quantityhours to several days — the time scale on which structural plasticity rewires the network
Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher.
content_tags.quantities[6]
definitionworking memory
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content_tags.definitions[0]
definitionlong-term memory
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content_tags.definitions[1]
definitionchunking
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content_tags.definitions[2]
definitiondetectability
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content_tags.definitions[3]
definitionretrograde alteration
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content_tags.definitions[4]
definitionstructural plasticity
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content_tags.definitions[5]
definitioneligibility traces
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content_tags.definitions[6]
definitionintrinsic plasticity
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content_tags.definitions[7]
definitionsynaptic tagging
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content_tags.definitions[8]
definitionreservoir computing
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content_tags.definitions[9]
definitionsynaptic scaling
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content_tags.definitions[10]
Concepts
terms this paper carries, each with the sentence it was cut from — the layer that joins one paper to another. Terms with no quote yet are on CONCEPTS.html.
conceptworking memory
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concepts[0]
conceptshort-term memory
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concepts[1]
conceptlong-term memory
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concepts[2]
concepteligibility traces
Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher.
concepts[3]
concepttime scale
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concepts[4]

When we have changed our mind. Some entries in the table begin with a word in capitals and the reason for it. EVIDENCE CORRECTED — the finding still stands, but we had quoted the wrong sentence from the paper, and the quotation has been replaced with the right one. RETRACTED — the entry itself was wrong; it stays on the page, marked, with the reason, rather than being deleted. WITHDRAWN AND REPLACED — the entry was wrong, and a corrected version of it appears in the entries below. Each mark carries its own reason, in brackets, because the reasons differ from one entry to the next. An entry we have WITHDRAWN is removed from this page and kept in the record, with its reason. A line reading Audit and a date is a later re-reading of the entry against its whole sentence: DOUBTFUL means it was kept, and the reason says what is loose about it. Quotation marks inside the tagger's sentence. Where a tag is the tagger's own sentence, a phrase in quotation marks inside it is borrowed from the paper — the tagger's wording around it is not. The paper's own sentence is the evidence quote for that row; on this page it is withheld with the article, and the article is at its publisher. Nothing inside quotation marks anywhere on this page is ours: if it is quoted, it is the paper's. Whose words a concept carries. A concept entry records a term the paper itself uses, so the term, the sense given for it, and its evidence are the paper's own words, quoted where the paper fixes them. This is the opposite of a sense entry in the tag table, which is the tagger's sentence about how the paper uses a term. Where a concept entry could not be grounded in the paper's words, the entry says so on its own row.

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