Deep sleep: understanding the process of hippocampal playback and plasticity

The hippocampus is a critical brain region for human memory function, particularly the encoding of new episodic memories. Recent experiments based on rats running for a food reward show that temporal sequences of place cell firings are encoded in the hippocampus during waking exploration, and replayed at a twenty-fold increased rate during slow wave sleep. We show that a suitable hippocampal model using spiking neurons, and recent results from synaptic plasticity research, can replicate these results, and provide answers to important questions about the function of sleep and the mechanisms of neural plasticity. We also suggest avenues of further research, and make predictions for experimental verification.