Quantized conductance was observed in a cation-migration-based resistive switching memory cell with a simple metal-insulator-metal (MIM) structure using a thin Ta(2)O(5) layer. The observed conductance changes are attributed to the formation and dissolution of a metal filament with an atomic point contact of different integer multiples in the Ta(2)O(5) layer. The results demonstrate that atomic point contacts can be realized in an oxide-based MIM structure that functions as a nanogap-based atomic switch (Terabe et al 2005 Nature 433 47). By applying consecutive voltage pulses at periodic intervals of different times, we also observed an effect analogous to the long-term potentiation of biological synapses, which shows that the oxide-based atomic switch has potential for use as an essential building block of neural computing systems.