On neuronal identity and representational drift - with Timothy O'Leary - #42

A bursting neuron can maintain its firing-pattern identity throughout an animal's life, even though the ion-channel proteins underlying this identity are turned over on the timescale of days. Today's guest has proposed that neuronal identities are stored in the specific protein production rules, which are regulated by intracellular calcium signaling. And how can animals reliably perform a learned task for weeks, even when the underlying neural representation drifts over time, so-called representational drift?