Phase of firing does not reflect temporal order in sequence memory of humans and recurrent neural networks

Here we assess this by measuring single neuron activity (1,420 neurons) and local field potentials (921 channels) in the medial temporal lobe of 16 patients with epilepsy performing a working-memory task for temporal order. During memory maintenance, we observe theta oscillations, preferential firing of single neurons to theta phase and a close relationship between phase of firing and item position.

However, the firing order did not match item order. Training recurrent neural networks to perform an analogous task, we also show the generation of theta oscillations, theta phase-dependent firing related to item position and, again, no match between firing and item order. Rather, our results suggest a mechanistic link between phase order, stimulus timing and oscillation frequency.