Intraneuronal information processing, directional selectivity and memory for spatio-temporal sequences.

Interacting intracellular signalling pathways can perform computations on a scale that is slower, but more fine-grained, than the interactions between neurons upon which we normally build our computational models of the brain (Bray D 1995 Nature 376 307-12). What computations might these potentially powerful intraneuronal mechanisms be performing? The answer suggested here is: storage of spatio-temporal sequences of synaptic excitation so that each individual neuron can recognize recurrent patterns that have excited it in the past. The experimental facts about directionally selective neurons in the visual system show that neurons do not integrate separately in space and time, but along straight spatio-temporal trajectories; thus, neurons have some of the capacities required to perform such a task. In the retina, it is suggested that calcium-induced calcium release (CICR) may provide the basis for directional selectivity. In the cortex, if activation mechanisms with different delays could be separately reinforced at individual synapses, then each such Hebbian super-synapse would store a memory trace of the delay between pre- and post-synaptic activity, forming an ideal basis for the memory and response to phase sequences.