Neural pointers

So how does info get routed into working or hippocampal memory? Pointers! Working and hippocampal memory are not encoding the information about a memory, but rather pointing to PTV where the information is stored. These pointers are stored in the sequence of spikes during each theta cycle. When Frontal wants to remember something, then it burst activates the neurons which leads to some plasticity. This plasticity is bi-directional. The PTV neurons that are currently active reinforce together (so that the memory can be recalled more easily ala a hopfield net/local minima), and then reinforce with a hippocampal sequence. The hippocampal sequence also reinforces with all of PTV, so that when the hippocampal sequence gets activated all of the info in PTV will be reactivated as well.

Lets think about working memory a little more. I vaguely remember some talks/papers I've read about how working memory would be implemented by the brain. there is a region in frontal cortex where a slow oscillation similar to theta dominates. During this slow oscillation, about 7 neural pointers can be stored (in the human brain). Each pointer was reinforced with some frontal burst feedback, so that each of the pointers can reactivate the PTV that has all of the information. You can imagine how the working memory structure can just maintain the 7 pointers in its slow oscillation through some sort of recurrent activation and plasticity or through that STP mechanism. This is how the working memory is maintained over longer time-scales. Then the different pointers being stored in working memory can be reactivated by another frontal area (another burst signal or something), which brings back the information stored in PTV.

Hippocampus is basically the same, but the pointers are built over a slow timescale (during each theta cycle), and then a memory over a larger time-scale can be recalled more quickly by activating a sharp-wave ripple.