Rewiring the Human Brain: On the Fabric of Associative Thinking

Concept cells are neurons in the medial temporal lobe that represent an abstract concept, such as a familiar person, in a context-independent way. They are activated by heterogeneous and potentially multimodal sensory input related to the concept, such as viewing a photo of the person, reading the person's name, or hearing the person's voice. Learning the concept implies connecting the cortical cells that are triggered when such features are perceived with the cells of the concept, resulting in an associative memory engram. Traditional models explain the formation of such an engram with Hebbian learning through synaptic plasticity, the strengthening of existing synapses in response to co-activation. However, the low edge density of the brain suggests that direct connections in the form of preexisting synapses between these cells are relatively unlikely, rendering such constructs inefficient and volatile. Instead, it is plausible that more persistent concept engrams rely on structural plasticity, involving the creation of synapses de novo. Yet, it remains unclear how neurons can find new postsynaptic targets over such a considerable distance. In this paper, we simulate the formation of such structural engrams in the connectomes of healthy subjects, offering a model hypothesis of how such engrams can be formed on a structural level. Based on our model, we further demonstrate how activating a concept can trigger related concepts through overlapping sensory associations, in a process we call a percept-concept loop.