Reverberation and Short Term Memory

• Let's say that a CA (for cup) has 10,000 excitatory (pyramidal?) neurons.
• If each have (say) 500 strong connections to other neurons in the CA, then,
• if enough (say 500) fire in a 10 ms interval (from say a visual presentation of a cup), the CA should ignite.
• If they each fire on average every 20 ms, then the CA could fire persistently for some time.
• While it is firing at a high rate (and every 20ms is pretty high), the CA is in psychological short term memory.
• Now, the CA may stop firing due to adaptation, short term plasticity, interference (inhibition) from other CAs, or something else.
• When that happens, cup has left short term memory.
• This is (what I've been calling) the standard model.
• A long term memory is a CA based on mutual connection strength.
• The short term memory is the neurons in the CA firing at an elevated rate.