We explored whether individual features and bindings between those features in VSTM tasks are completely lost from trial to trial or whether residual memory traces for these features and bindings are retained in long-term memory. Memory for arrays of colored shapes was assessed using change detection or cued recall. Across trials, either the same color-shape (integrated object) combinations were repeated or one feature was repeated while the other varied. Observers became sensitive to the repetition of bindings, but only if it occurred on every trial. Repetition of single features only led to learning in the cued-recall task, and was weak compared to whole-object repetitions. Results suggest that representations in visual short-term memory comprise integrated objects rather than individual features. These representations are readily displaced by new representations formed on subsequent trials. However, when a given representation is not displaced, longerterm residual traces can be generated to support long-term learning, and any learning that does occur is based on integrated objects, not individual features.

Curiosity is a basic biological drive, but little is known about its behavioral and neural mechanisms. We can be curious about several types of information. On the one hand, curiosity is a function of the expected value of information, serving primarily to help us maximize reward. On the other hand, curiosity can be a function of the uncertainty of information, helping us to update what we know. In the current studies, we aimed to disentangle the contribution of information uncertainty and expected value of rewards to curiosity in humans of either sex. To this end, we designed a lottery task in which uncertainty and expected value of trial outcomes were manipulated independently, and examined how neural activity and behavioral measures of curiosity were modulated by these factors. Curiosity increased linearly with increased outcome uncertainty, both when curiosity was explicitly probed as well as when it was implicitly tested by people's willingness to wait. Increased expected value, however, did not strongly relate to these curiosity measures. Neuroimaging results showed greater BOLD response with increasing outcome uncertainty in parietal cortex at the time of curiosity induction. Outcome updating when curiosity was relieved resulted in an increased signal in the insula, orbitofrontal cortex and parietal cortex. Furthermore, the insula showed a linear increase corresponding to the size of the information update. These results suggest that curiosity is monotonically related to the uncertainty about one's current world model, the induction and relief of which are associated with activity in parietal and insular cortices respectively.Humans are curious by nature. When you hear your phone beep, you probably feel the urge to check the message right away, even though the message itself likely doesn't give you a direct reward. In this study, we demonstrated that curiosity can be driven by outcome uncertainty, irrespective of reward. The induction of curiosity was accompanied by increased activity in the parietal cortex, whereas the information update at the time of curiosity relief was associated with activity in insular cortex. These findings advance our understanding of the behavioral and neural constituents of curiosity, which lies at the core of human information-seeking and serves to optimize the individual's current world-model.

Visual working memory (VWM) recruits a broad network of brain regions, including prefrontal, parietal, and visual cortices. Recent evidence supports a "sensory recruitment" model of VWM, whereby precise visual details are maintained in the same stimulus-selective regions responsible for perception. A key question in evaluating the sensory recruitment model is how VWM representations persist through distracting visual input, given that the early visual areas that putatively represent VWM content are susceptible to interference from visual stimulation.To address this question, we used a functional magnetic resonance imaging inverted encoding model approach to quantitatively assess the effect of distractors on VWM representations in early visual cortex and the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), another region previously implicated in the storage of VWM information. This approach allowed us to reconstruct VWM representations for orientation, both before and after visual interference, and to examine whether oriented distractors systematically biased these representations. In our human participants (both male and female), we found that orientation information was maintained simultaneously in early visual areas and IPS in anticipation of possible distraction, and these representations persisted in the absence of distraction. Importantly, early visual representations were susceptible to interference; VWM orientations reconstructed from visual cortex were significantly biased toward distractors, corresponding to a small attractive bias in behavior. In contrast, IPS representations did not show such a bias. These results provide quantitative insight into the effect of interference on VWM representations, and they suggest a dynamic tradeoff between visual and parietal regions that allows flexible adaptation to task demands in service of VWM. Despite considerable evidence that stimulus-selective visual regions maintain precise visual information in working memory, it remains unclear how these representations persist through subsequent input. Here, we used quantitative model-based fMRI analyses to reconstruct the contents of working memory and examine the effects of distracting input. Although representations in the early visual areas were systematically biased by distractors, those in the intraparietal sulcus appeared distractor-resistant. In contrast, early visual representations were most reliable in the absence of distraction. These results demonstrate the dynamic, adaptive nature of visual working memory processes, and provide quantitative insight into the ways in which representations can be affected by interference. Further, they suggest that current models of working memory should be revised to incorporate this flexibility.