scholarly journals Synaptic mechanisms of interference in working memory

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zachary P Kilpatrick
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Target Location ◽  
Network Connectivity ◽  
Recurrent Network ◽  
Current Trial ◽  
History Of ◽  
Low Dimensional ◽  
Static Connectivity ◽  
Target Locations

SummaryInformation from preceding trials of cognitive tasks can bias performance in the current trial, a phenomenon referred to as interference. Subjects performing visual working memory tasks exhibit interference in their trial-to-trial response correlations: the recalled target location in the current trial is biased in the direction of the target presented on the previous trial. We present modeling work that (a) develops a probabilistic inference model of this history-dependent bias, and (b) links our probabilistic model to computations of a recurrent network wherein short-term facilitation accounts for the dynamics of the observed bias. Network connectivity is reshaped dynamically during each trial, providing a mechanism for generating predictions from prior trial observations. Applying timescale separation methods, we can obtain a low-dimensional description of the trial-to-trial bias based on the history of target locations. The model has response statistics whose mean is centered at the true target location across many trials, typical of such visual working memory tasks. Furthermore, we demonstrate task protocols for which the plastic model performs better than a model with static connectivity: repetitively presented targets are better retained in working memory than targets drawn from uncorrelated sequences.

scholarly journals Task-Irrelevant Features in Visual Working Memory Influence Covert Attention: Evidence from a Partial Report Task

Vision ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca M. Foerster ◽  
Werner X. Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Shape Matching ◽  
Target Location ◽  
Covert Attention ◽  
Partial Report ◽  
Target Color ◽  
Color Target ◽  
Irrelevant Color ◽  
Task Irrelevant

Selecting a target based on a representation in visual working memory (VWM) affords biasing covert attention towards objects with memory-matching features. Recently, we showed that even task-irrelevant features of a VWM template bias attention. Specifically, when participants had to saccade to a cued shape, distractors sharing the cue’s search-irrelevant color captured the eyes. While a saccade always aims at one target location, multiple locations can be attended covertly. Here, we investigated whether covert attention is captured similarly as the eyes. In our partial report task, each trial started with a shape-defined search cue, followed by a fixation cross. Next, two colored shapes, each including a letter, appeared left and right from fixation, followed by masks. The letter inside that shape matching the preceding cue had to be reported. In Experiment 1, either target, distractor, both, or no object matched the cue’s irrelevant color. Target-letter reports were most frequent in target-match trials and least frequent in distractor-match trials. Irrelevant cue and target color never matched in Experiment 2. Still, participants reported the distractor more often to the target’s disadvantage, when cue and distractor color matched. Thus, irrelevant features of a VWM template can influence covert attention in an involuntarily object-based manner when searching for trial-wise varying targets.

scholarly journals Working-memory capacity predicts the executive control of visual search among distractors: The influences of sustained and selective attention

2009 ◽  
Vol 62 (7) ◽  
pp. 1430-1454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradley J. Poole ◽  
Michael J. Kane
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Search ◽  
Target Location ◽  
Memory Span ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
Memory Capacity ◽  
Attentional Focus ◽  
Search Tasks ◽  
Span Tasks ◽  
Target Locations

Variation in working-memory capacity (WMC) predicts individual differences in only some attention-control capabilities. Whereas higher WMC subjects outperform lower WMC subjects in tasks requiring the restraint of prepotent but inappropriate responses, and the constraint of attentional focus to target stimuli against distractors, they do not differ in prototypical visual-search tasks, even those that yield steep search slopes and engender top-down control. The present three experiments tested whether WMC, as measured by complex memory span tasks, would predict search latencies when the 1–8 target locations to be searched appeared alone, versus appearing among distractor locations to be ignored, with the latter requiring selective attentional focus. Subjects viewed target-location cues and then fixated on those locations over either long (1,500–1,550 ms) or short (300 ms) delays. Higher WMC subjects identified targets faster than did lower WMC subjects only in the presence of distractors and only over long fixation delays. WMC thus appears to affect subjects’ ability to maintain a constrained attentional focus over time.

Implicit Knowledge of Target Location Biases Encoding Into Visual Working Memory

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Awh ◽  
Akina Umemoto ◽  
Miranda Scolari ◽  
Edward Vogel
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Target Location ◽  
Implicit Knowledge

scholarly journals Visual working memory deficits in undergraduates with a history of mild traumatic brain injury

2019 ◽  
Vol 81 (8) ◽  
pp. 2597-2603 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hector Arciniega ◽  
Alexandrea Kilgore-Gomez ◽  
Alison Harris ◽  
Dwight J. Peterson ◽  
Jaclyn McBride ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Traumatic Brain Injury ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Brain Injury ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Mild Traumatic Brain Injury ◽  
Memory Deficits ◽  
History Of

Oculomotor selection underlies feature retention in visual working memory

2016 ◽  
Vol 115 (2) ◽  
pp. 1071-1076 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina M. Hanning ◽  
Donatas Jonikaitis ◽  
Heiner Deubel ◽  
Martin Szinte
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Target Selection ◽  
Spatial Task ◽  
Saccade Target ◽  
Task Relevance ◽  
Feature Representations ◽  
Feature Based ◽  
Target Locations

Oculomotor selection, spatial task relevance, and visual working memory (WM) are described as three processes highly intertwined and sustained by similar cortical structures. However, because task-relevant locations always constitute potential saccade targets, no study so far has been able to distinguish between oculomotor selection and spatial task relevance. We designed an experiment that allowed us to dissociate in humans the contribution of task relevance, oculomotor selection, and oculomotor execution to the retention of feature representations in WM. We report that task relevance and oculomotor selection lead to dissociable effects on feature WM maintenance. In a first task, in which an object's location was encoded as a saccade target, its feature representations were successfully maintained in WM, whereas they declined at nonsaccade target locations. Likewise, we observed a similar WM benefit at the target of saccades that were prepared but never executed. In a second task, when an object's location was marked as task relevant but constituted a nonsaccade target (a location to avoid), feature representations maintained at that location did not benefit. Combined, our results demonstrate that oculomotor selection is consistently associated with WM, whereas task relevance is not. This provides evidence for an overlapping circuitry serving saccade target selection and feature-based WM that can be dissociated from processes encoding task-relevant locations.

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