An Embedded-Processes Model of Working Memory

Cowan, Nelson

doi:10.1017/cbo9781139174909.006

Cited by 1,010 publications

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“…However, discrepancies about the definition of WM exist in the current literature: it has been defined a) as a STM system applied to cognitive tasks (Engle, Tuholski, Laughlin, 1999;Conway, Kane, Bunting, Hambrick, Wilhelm, Engle, 2005); a) as a multi-component system that stores and manipulates information in STM (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974); (c) as the use of attention to manage STM (Engle, 2002); d) as immediate perceptions together with related activated long-term memories, semi-activated contextual information not in consciousness plus information that has just been in consciousness (Snyder, 2000). In this line (d) other authors' views (Engel & Singer, 2001;Ruchkin, Grafman, Cameron, & Berndt, 2003;Ward, 2003;Cowan, 1999;Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995) regard WM not as a separate system, but as an activated subset of LTM.…”

Section: Short-term Memory Versus Working Memorymentioning

confidence: 93%

“…He proposes that WM is not limited to one mechanism, and any necessary group of mechanisms at the individual's disposal is likely to be used to retrieve the needed information. According to Cowan, using more than one mechanism is usually less taxing than relying on just one (Cowan, 1999). His idea of WM assumes activation mechanisms, attentional and executive mechanisms, and LTM retrieval mechanisms cooperating to build an effective WM system.…”

Section: ) To Account For How Emotion Mediates Memory Storagementioning

confidence: 99%

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Dynamics of brain activity underlying working memory for music in a naturalistic condition

Burunat

Alluri

Toiviainen

et al. 2014

Cortex

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Sivumäärä -Number of pages 70Tiivistelmä -Abstract Working memory (WM) is at the core of any cognitive function as it is necessary for the integration of information over time. Despite WM's critical role in high-level cognitive functions, its implementation in the neural tissue is poorly understood. Preliminary studies on auditory WM show differences between linguistic and musical memory, leading to the speculation of specific neural networks encoding memory for music. Moreover, in neuroscience WM has not been studied in naturalistic listening conditions but rather in artificial settings (e.g., n-back and Sternberg tasks). Western tonal music provides naturally occurring motivic repetition and variation, recognizable units serving as WM trigger, thus allowing us to study the phenomenon of motif-tracking in the context of real music. Adopting a modern tango as stimulus, behavioural methods were used to identify the stimulus motifs and build a time-course predictor of WM neural responses. This predictor was then correlated with the participants' functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signal obtained during a continuous listening condition. Neural correlates related to the sensory processing of a set of musical features were filtered out from the brain responses to music to aid in the exclusive recruitment of executive processes of music-related WM. Correlational analysis revealed a widely distributed network of cortical and subcortical areas, predominantly right-lateralized, responding to the WM condition, including ventral and dorsal areas in the prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia, and limbic areas. Significant subcortical processing areas, active in response to the WM condition, were pruned with the removal of the acoustic content, suggesting these music-related perceptual processing areas might aid in the encoding and retrieval of WM. The pattern of dispersed neural activity indicates WM to emerge coherently from the integration of distributed neural activity spread out over different brain subsystems (motoric-, cognitive-and sensory-related areas of the brain).Asiasanat -Keywords working memory; cognitive neuroscience; music; musical motifs; functional magnetic resonance imaging ( Lashley was attempting to identify the locus of memory within the cortex, and, to do so, first trained rats to run mazes, and then removed various cortical regions. He allowed the animals to recover and tested the retention of the maze-running skills. To his surprise it was not possible to find a particular region corresponding to the ability to remember the way through a maze. Instead all the rats which had had cortex regions removed suffered some kind of impairment, and the extent of the impairment was roughly proportional to the amount of cortex taken off. Removing cortex damaged the motor and sensory capacities of the animals, and they would limp, hop, roll, or stagger, but somehow they always managed to traverse the maze. So far as memory 'as concerned, the cortex appeared to be equipotential, that is, with all regions of eq...

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Section: Short-term Memory Versus Working Memorymentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: ) To Account For How Emotion Mediates Memory Storagementioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamics of brain activity underlying working memory for music in a naturalistic condition

Burunat

Alluri

Toiviainen

et al. 2014

Cortex

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It has been suggested that Broca's area, and perhaps ventro-lateral pre-frontal cortex more generally, may be specialized for the selection and comparison of maintained information (Petrides, 1996;Petrides et al, 1995), or for the maintenance of information over a delay (D'Esposito et al, 1998;Smith and Jonides, 1997). Similarly, it has been argued that the role of this cortex in working memory may be to recall or select and maintain information that is actually stored in temporal and temporo-parietal regions (Cowan, 1996;Cowan, 1999;Ruchkin et al, In Press). A recent study suggests that posterior Broca's area subserves the manipulation of sequential information, independent of the type of information that is manipulated (Gelfand and Bookheimer, 2003).…”

Section: Working Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Specific Language Impairment is not Specific to Language: the Procedural Deficit Hypothesis

Ullman

Pierpont

2005

Cortex

674

729

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Specific Language Impairment (SLI) has been explained by two broad classes of hypotheses, which posit either a deficit specific to grammar, or a non-linguistic processing impairment. Here we advance an alternative perspective. According to the Procedural Deficit Hypothesis (PDH), SLI can be largely explained by the abnormal development of brain structures that constitute the procedural memory system. This system, which is composed of a network of inter-connected structures rooted in frontal/basal-ganglia circuits, subserves the learning and execution of motor and cognitive skills.Crucially, recent evidence also implicates this system in important aspects of grammar. The PDH posits that a significant proportion of individuals with SLI suffer from abnormalities of this brain network, leading to impairments of the linguistic and non-linguistic functions that depend on it. In contrast, functions such as lexical and declarative memory, which depend on other brain structures, are expected to remain largely spared. Evidence from an in-depth retrospective examination of the literature is presented. It is argued that the data support the predictions of the PDH, and particularly implicate Broca's area within frontal cortex, and the caudate nucleus within the basal ganglia. Finally, broader implications are discussed, and predictions for future research are presented. It is argued that the PDH forms the basis of a novel and potentially productive perspective on SLI. INTRODUCTIONSpecific Language Impairment (SLI) is generally defined as a developmental disorder of language in the absence of frank neurological damage, hearing deficits, severe environmental deprivation, or mental retardation (for diagnostic definitions and prevalence of SLI, see Bishop, 1992;Leonard, 1998;Tomblin et al., 1997). Other terms have also been used to label such children, including developmental dysphasia, language impairment, language learning disability, developmental language disorder, delayed speech and deviant language (Leonard, 1998;Ahmed et al., 2001). Several factors have complicated attempts to provide a unified theory of SLI, or even of subgroups of SLI. First, despite the standard use of exclusionary criteria to diagnose SLI, the disorder is clearly not limited to language.Rather the linguistic impairments co-occur with a number of non-linguistic deficits, including impairments of motor skills and working memory, and with other disorders, such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (Hill, 2001;Leonard, 1998;Tirosh and Cohen, 1998). Second, even though SLI must be a consequence of some sort of neural dysfunction, the neural correlates of the disorder have been largely ignored. This potentially valuable information could provide important constraints on explanatory accounts of the disorder. Third, SLI is a classification that is quite heterogeneous (Leonard, 1998;Stromswold, 2000). Surveys document variation within and across subgroups in the particular aspects of language that are affected and in the types of co-occurring no...

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“…All goal-directed behavior, however trivial, might be said to require executive involvement: Cowan's operational definition of executive functions includes all processes that can be influenced by instructions or incentives (Cowan 2001). In general, executive functions serve the same explanatory roles as control processes (Atkinson and Shiffrin 1968;Schneider and Shiffrin 1977;Shiffrin and Schneider 1977); that is, those nonroutinized, attentionally-demanding, consciously-available, volitional processes that initiate a certain action or interrupt and adjust ongoing actions.…”

Section: Executive Control Processes and Their Constituent Neural Netmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Executive Control in Human Drug Addiction

Hester

Lubman

Yücel

2009

Behavioral Neuroscience of Drug Addiction

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An Embedded-Processes Model of Working Memory

Cited by 1,010 publications

References 0 publications

Dynamics of brain activity underlying working memory for music in a naturalistic condition

Dynamics of brain activity underlying working memory for music in a naturalistic condition

Specific Language Impairment is not Specific to Language: the Procedural Deficit Hypothesis

The Role of Executive Control in Human Drug Addiction

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