| Summary: | Human memory can store large amount of information. Nevertheless, recalling is often achallenging task. In a classical free recall paradigm, where participants are asked to repeat abriefly presented list of words, people make mistakes for lists as short as 5 words. We present amodel for memory retrieval based on a Hopfield neural network where transition between itemsare determined by similarities in their long-term memory representations. Meanfield analysis ofthe model reveals stable states of the network corresponding (1) to single memory representationsand (2) intersection between memory representations. We show that oscillating feedback inhibitionin the presence of noise induces transitions between these states triggering the retrieval ofdifferent memories. The network dynamics qualitatively predicts the distribution of time intervalsrequired to recall new memory items observed in experiments. It shows that items having largernumber of neurons in their representation are statistically easier to recall and reveals possiblebottlenecks in our ability of retrieving memories. Overall, we propose a neural network model ofinformation retrieval broadly compatible with experimental observations and is consistent with ourrecent graphical model (Romani et al., 2013).
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