Simultaneous representation of sensory and mnemonic information in human visual cortex

Serences, John T.

doi:10.1101/339200

Cited by 2 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…The importance of 2-D space in VWM is consistent with the clear maplike organization of 2-D spatial position across the cortical surface, which should result in less neural competition and more distinct representations as items are spaced farther apart (Engel, Glover, & Wandell, 1997; Grill-Spector & Malach, 2004; Maunsell & Newsome, 1987; Sereno et al, 1995; Sereno, Pitzalis, & Martinez, 2001; Talbot & Marshall, 1941). This general idea is consistent with a sensory-recruitment account, which proposes that early sensory cortex supports the maintenance of sensory information in working memory (D'Esposito & Postle, 2015; Emrich, Riggall, Larocque, & Postle, 2013; Harrison & Tong, 2009; Pasternak & Greenlee, 2005; Rademaker, Chunharas, & Serences, 2018; Serences, 2016; Serences, Ester, Vogel, & Awh, 2009; Sreenivasan, Curtis, & D'Esposito, 2014). Thus, overlap or competition between representations in retinotopic maps may impose limits on how well visual information is encoded and remembered (Emrich et al, 2013; Sprague, Ester, & Serences, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 82%

Separating memoranda in depth increases visual working memory performance

et al. 2019

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Visual working memory is the mechanism supporting the continued maintenance of information after sensory inputs are removed. Although the capacity of visual working memory is limited, memoranda that are spaced farther apart on a 2-D display are easier to remember, potentially because neural representations are more distinct within retinotopically organized areas of visual cortex during memory encoding, maintenance, or retrieval. The impact on memory of spatial separability in depth is less clear, even though depth information is essential to guiding interactions with objects in the environment. On one account, separating memoranda in depth may facilitate performance if interference between items is reduced. However, depth information must be inferred indirectly from the 2-D retinal image, and less is known about how visual cortex represents depth. Thus, an alternative possibility is that separation in depth does not attenuate between-items interference; it may even impair performance, as attention must be distributed across a larger volume of 3-D space. We tested these alternatives using a stereo display while participants remembered the colors of stimuli presented either near or far in the 2-D plane or in depth. Increasing separation in-plane and in depth both enhanced performance. Furthermore, participants who were better able to utilize stereo depth cues showed larger benefits when memoranda were separated in depth, particularly for large memory arrays. The observation that spatial separation in the inferred 3-D structure of the environment improves memory performance, as is the case in 2-D environments, suggests that separating memoranda in depth might reduce neural competition by utilizing cortically separable resources.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 82%

Separating memoranda in depth increases visual working memory performance

et al. 2019

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“…Here we demonstrate, within a single spatial working memory paradigm, that task requirements are a critical determinant of how and where WM is implemented in the brain. These data provide a partial unifying explanation for divergent prior findings that implicate different regions in visual WM (Bettencourt & Xu, 2015;Ester, Rademaker, & Sprague, 2016;Iamshchinina et al, 2021;Rademaker et al, 2019;Xu, 2018Xu, , 2020. More importantly, however, our data show that WM flexibly engages different cortical areas and coding formats, even in the context of a task that is commonly used to study a single underlying construct (i.e., visuo-spatial WM).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 54%

“…This was done to ensure that any condition-specific changes in the mean BOLD responses did not contribute to differences in classification accuracy (see Methods: Analysis: Spatial Position Decoding). We then sorted the continuous angular positions into 8 non-overlapping bins and used a decoding scheme with four binary classifiers, where each binary classifier was independently trained to discriminate between spatial positions that fell into bins separated by 180° (see Figure 2A and Rademaker et al, 2019). The final decoding accuracy for each task condition reflects the average decoding accuracy across all four of these binary classifiers, where chance is 50% (see Methods, Analysis: Spatial Position Decoding).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Based on the work discussed above, visual WM may be implemented quite flexibly, as opposed to having a singular neural locus or mechanism. Consistent with this idea, there are indications that even information related to the same stimulus might be stored at several different loci and in different formats (Iamshchinina, Christophel, Gayet, & Rademaker, 2021;Lee, Kravitz, & Baker, 2013;Rademaker et al, 2019;Serences, 2016). At the same time, few experiments have directly tested whether representations of memorized features in early visual cortex are subject to task modulation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The paradigms used in human neuroimaging experiments typically sit at the retrospective end of this continuum. In most fMRI studies of visual WM, participants are required to remember precise values of continuously varying features, and to report these remembered features using responses that cannot be pre-planned during the delay period (Albers, Kok, Toni, Dijkerman, & De Lange, 2013;Christophel, Hebart, & Haynes, 2012;Harrison & Tong, 2009;Lorenc, Sreenivasan, Nee, Vandenbroucke, & D'Esposito, 2018;Rademaker, Chunharas, & Serences, 2019;Serences, Ester, Vogel, & Awh, 2009;Xing, Ledgeway, McGraw, & Schluppeck, 2013). Such tasks may encourage top-down recruitment of the same early sensory areas that support high-precision perceptual representations (Awh & Jonides, 2001;Gazzaley & Nobre, 2012;Pasternak & Greenlee, 2005;Serences, 2016;Sreenivasan, Curtis, & D'Esposito, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Flexible utilization of spatial- and motor-based codes for the storage of visuo-spatial information

Henderson

Rademaker

Serences

2021

Preprint

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Working memory (WM) provides flexible storage of information in service of upcoming behavioral goals. Some models propose specific fixed loci and mechanisms for the storage of visual information in WM, such as sustained spiking in parietal and prefrontal cortex during the maintenance of features. An alternative view is that information can be remembered in a flexible format that best suits current behavioral goals. For example, remembered visual information might be stored in sensory areas for easier comparison to future sensory inputs (i.e. a retrospective code) or might be remapped into a more abstract, output-oriented format and stored in motor areas (i.e. a prospective code). Here, we tested this hypothesis using a visual-spatial working memory task where the required behavioral response was either known or unknown during the memory delay period. Using fMRI and multivariate decoding, we found that there was less information about remembered spatial positions in early visual and parietal regions when the required response was known versus unknown. Further, a representation of the planned motor action emerged in primary somatosensory, primary motor, and premotor cortex on the same trials where spatial information was reduced in early visual cortex. These results suggest that the neural networks supporting WM can be strategically reconfigured depending on the specific behavioral requirements of canonical visual WM paradigms.

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Simultaneous representation of sensory and mnemonic information in human visual cortex

Cited by 2 publications

References 33 publications

Separating memoranda in depth increases visual working memory performance

Separating memoranda in depth increases visual working memory performance

Flexible utilization of spatial- and motor-based codes for the storage of visuo-spatial information

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