Background Our brains are capable of remarkably stable stimulus representations despite
time-varying neural activity. For instance, during delay periods in working memory tasks …

The brain displays a remarkable ability to sustain stable memories, allowing animals to
execute precise behaviors or recall stimulus associations years after they were first learned …

Neural activity underlying short-term memory is maintained by interconnected networks of
brain regions. It remains unknown how brain regions interact to maintain persistent activity …

Sequential and persistent activity models are two prominent models of short-term memory in
neural circuits. In persistent activity models, memories are represented in persistent or …

Animals readily execute learned behaviors in a consistent manner over long periods of time,
and yet no equally stable neural correlate has been demonstrated. How does the cortex …

Highlights•Metastable activity is increasingly being observed in many cortical areas and in a
variety of tasks.•Metastable activity is correlated with sensory and cognitive processes and …

A group of neurons can generate patterns of activity that represent information about stimuli;
subsequently, the group can transform and transmit activity patterns across synapses to …

Persistent neural activity is observed in many systems, and is thought to be a neural
substrate for holding memories over time delays of a few seconds. Recent work has …

Neural correlates of external variables provide potential internal codes that guide an
animal's behavior. Notably, first-order features of neural activity, such as single-neuron firing …

The temporal activity of many physical and biological systems, from complex networks to
neural circuits, exhibits fluctuations simultaneously varying over a large range of timescales …