Multiple gates on working memory

Abstract

The contexts for action may be only transiently visible, accessible, and relevant. The corticobasal ganglia (BG) circuit addresses these demands by allowing the right motor plans to drive action at the right times, via a BG-mediated gate on motor representations. A long-standing hypothesis posits these same circuits are replicated in more rostral brain regions to support gating of cognitive representations. Key evidence now supports the prediction that BG can act as a gate on the input to working memory, as a gate on its output, and as a means of reallocating working memory representations rendered irrelevant by recent events. These discoveries validate key tenets of many computational models, circumscribe motor and cognitive models of recurrent cortical dynamics alone, and identify novel directions for research on the mechanisms of higher-level cognition.

Frontostriatal Contribution to the Interplay of Flexibility and Stability in Serial Prediction

“…This suggests that specific behavioral implications of both event types have been or are recognized at this processing stage. This novel finding extends the proposed input gating function to control cognitive and motor representations in the pFC (Chatham & Badre, 2015;Badre, 2012;Cools, 2011). Our data thus integrate the above-mentioned findings, suggesting that flexible stimulus processing in the striatum might comprise a selection process, which can entail adaptation, stabilization, or building of internal models.…”

“…In contrast, DA receptor activation in the striatum, one of the main target structures of SN and ventral tegmental area projections, has been linked to flexible updating of relevant information in working memory (e.g., D'Ardenne et al, 2012;Cools, Sheridan, Jacobs, & D'Esposito, 2007;Bilder, Volavka, Lachman, & Grace, 2004;Frank, Loughry, & O'Reilly, 2001). This has been described as a selective gating process (Chatham & Badre, 2015;Badre, 2012), in which input gating of the striatum ensures that behaviorally relevant information enters cortical working memory. The first questions of this study therefore is whether striatal activity relates exclusively to flexible updating driven by relevant changes or rather reflects the processing of unpredicted sensory information in general.…”

“…With regard to the role of the striatum in immediate response selection, we hypothesized caudate activity in response to both switches and drifts (Schiffer et al, 2012). Crucially, we expected the degree of activation increase to be correlated with the ability to discriminate between both events, showing that the striatum is related to selecting correct responses toward different types of prediction errors (Chatham & Badre, 2015;Badre, 2012). Finally, to test the idea that the dopaminergic midbrain is involved in the transition between cognitive states (Humphries et al, 2012;Durstewitz & Seamans, 2008), we measured adaptation of flexible and stable states as determined by previous performance within time windows that were individually fitted by levels of volatility predicting participants' behavioral data.…”

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Unexpected events disrupt visuomotor working memory and increase guessing

“…More generally this theory provides new perspectives on the connection between the basal ganglia and WM (c.f. Chatham & Badre, 2015).…”

Learning and transfer of working memory gating policies

“…WM control has been extensively analyzed within the gating framework (see Fig. 1), in which access to WM is controlled by a set of input and output gates (Chatham & Badre, 2015; O’Reilly and Frank, 2006; Todd, Niv, & Cohen, 2009). The contents of WM can be selectively updated by operating an input gate that determines whether stimulus information can enter WM.…”