Output planning at the input stage in visual working memory

Boettcher, Sage; Gresch, Daniela; Nobre, Anna C.; Ede, Freek van

doi:10.1126/sciadv.abe8212

Cited by 72 publications

(145 citation statements)

References 67 publications

(112 reference statements)

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“…Additionally, we found that information about prospective actions declined toward the end of the delay period, dropping below chance just before the response disk appeared (Figure 3B). This time course is consistent with a transient signal related to the initial formation of a prospective memory representation, and aligns with recent EEG findings in human motor cortex following a retro-cue in a visual WM task (Boettcher et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

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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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

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

Henderson

Rademaker

Serences

2021

Preprint

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“…As a consequence, the hand required for responding was directly linked to the angle of the bar that was probed. This builds on previous tasks from our lab (Boettcher et al, 2021;van Ede et al, 2019), though we note that the specifics of this response implementation were not critical to the current study. Once participants started rotating the dial, they were given only limited time (4000 ms) to complete the angle reproduction.…”

Section: Task and Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 63%

“…Besides calling on attentional control processes and mental workspaces that may have been concurrently active for working memory (e.g., Bae & Luck, 2019;Barrouillet et al, 2007;Souza & Oberauer, 2017), interrupters -which required a manual response -may also have directly affected the preparation of memory-guided actions. In our task, items were associated with specific actions which would allow action plans to be coactivated together with visual representations (Boettcher et al, 2021;van Ede et al, 2019). As such, interrupters may have additionally interfered with action plans in working memory, yielding a more detrimental effect on performance than was elicited by visual distractors not requiring any manual response.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shielding working-memory representations from temporally predictable external interference

Gresch¹,

Boettcher²,

Ede³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Protecting working-memory content from distracting external sensory inputs and intervening tasks is a ubiquitous demand in daily life. Here, we ask whether and how temporal expectations about external events can help mitigate effects of such interference during working-memory retention. We manipulated the temporal predictability of interfering items that occurred during the retention period of a visual working-memory task and report that temporal expectations reduce the detrimental influence of external interference on subsequent memory performance. Moreover, to determine if the protective effects of temporal expectations rely mainly on distractor suppression or also involve shielding of internal representations, we compared effects after irrelevant distractors that could be ignored vs. interrupters that required a response. Whereas distractor suppression may be sufficient to confer protection from predictable distractors, any benefits after interruption are likely to involve memory shielding. We found similar benefits of temporal expectations after both types of interference. We conclude that temporal expectations may play an important role in safeguarding behaviour based on working memory – acting, at least partly, through mechanisms that include the shielding of internal content from external interference.

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“…The interaction with task relevance suggests that stimulus processing is only biased when it is primed for later use in upcoming behaviour. Such an interplay of sensory and action systems has been shown to affect the encoding of visual features (Boettcher, Gresch, Nobre, & van Ede, 2021; Myers, Stokes, & Nobre, 2017; van Ede, Chekroud, Stokes, & Nobre, 2019). Circuits involved in the previous response could interact with motor encoding of the subsequent trial.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiple and Dissociable Effects of Sensory History on Working-Memory Performance

Hajonides

Ede²,

Stokes

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Behavioural reports of sensory information are biased by stimulus history. The nature and direction of such serial-dependence biases can differ between experimental settings – both attractive and repulsive biases towards previous stimuli have been observed. How and when these biases arise in the human brain remains largely unexplored. They could occur either via a change in sensory processing itself, post-perceptual maintenance or decision-making processes, or both. Here, we analysed behavioural and magnetoencephalographic data from a working-memory task in which participants were sequentially presented with two randomly oriented gratings, one of which was cued for recall at the end of the trial. Behavioural responses showed evidence for two distinct biases: 1) a within-trial repulsive bias away from the previously encoded orientation on the same trial, and 2) a between-trial attractive bias towards the task-relevant orientation on the previous trial. Multivariate classification of stimulus orientation revealed that neural representations during stimulus encoding were biased away from the previous grating orientation, regardless of whether we considered the within- or between-trial prior orientation – despite opposite effects on behaviour. These results suggest that repulsive biases occur at the level of sensory processing and can be overturned at post-perceptual stages to result in attractive biases in behaviour.

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Output planning at the input stage in visual working memory

Cited by 72 publications

References 67 publications

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

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

Shielding working-memory representations from temporally predictable external interference

Multiple and Dissociable Effects of Sensory History on Working-Memory Performance

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