The DOI matches its Crossref record; 14 of the 14 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Neural Evidence for a Distinction between Short-term Memory and the Focus of Attention
Open accessAbstract
It is widely assumed that the short-term retention of information is accomplished via maintenance of an active neural trace. However, we demonstrate that memory can be preserved across a brief delay despite the apparent loss of sustained representations. Delay period activity may, in fact, reflect the focus of attention, rather than STM. We unconfounded attention and memory by causing external and internal shifts of attention away from items that were being actively retained. Multivariate pattern analysis of fMRI indicated that only items within the focus of attention elicited an active neural trace. Activity corresponding to representations of items outside the focus quickly dropped to baseline. Nevertheless, this information was remembered after a brief delay. Our data also show that refocusing attention toward a previously unattended memory item can reactivate its neural signature. The loss of sustained activity has long been thought to indicate a disruption of STM, but our results suggest that, even for small memory loads not exceeding the capacity limits of STM, the active maintenance of a stimulus representation may not be necessary for its short-term retention.
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Cites
Human Memory: A Proposed System and its Control Processes
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The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage capacity
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Beyond mind-reading: multi-voxel pattern analysis of fMRI data
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“This is because, for example, the presence of sustained activity peaks in midfusiform gyrus does not necessarily imply that faces were being remembered, because this region can show above-baseline activity during many other cognitive states (eg, Gauthier, Skudlarski, Gore, & Anderson, 2000 ).”
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The Cognitive Neuroscience of Working Memory
D'Esposito, M., & Postle, B. R. (2015) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-010814-015031 · Cited by 1,653
Self-citationThe Distributed Nature of Working Memory
Christophel, T. B., Klink, P. C., Spitzer, B., Roelfsema, P. R., & Haynes, J.-D. (2017) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2016.12.007 · Cited by 882
‘Activity-silent’ working memory in prefrontal cortex: a dynamic coding framework
Stokes, M. G. (2015) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2015.05.004 · Cited by 850
Dynamic Coding for Cognitive Control in Prefrontal Cortex
Stokes, M. G., Kusunoki, M., Sigala, N., Nili, H., Gaffan, D., & Duncan, J. (2013) · Neuron · doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2013.01.039 · Cited by 711
Working memory and attention - a conceptual analysis and review
Oberauer, K. (2019) · Journal of Cognition · doi:10.5334/joc.58 · Cited by 634
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Metadata
- Authors
- Lewis-Peacock, J. A., Drysdale, A. T., Oberauer, K., & Postle, B. R.
- Venue
- Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
- Publisher
- MIT Press - Journals
- Published
- 2012-01-01
- Volume
- 24
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 61-79
- ISSN
- 0898-929X (ISSN-L)
- 1530-8898
- OpenAlex
- W2164473465
- Cited by
- 506
- References
- 14
- FWCI
- 8.74
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
