Maintenance and transformation of representational formats during working memory prioritization

Daniel Pacheco-Estefan (), Marie-Christin Fellner, Lukas Kunz, Hui Zhang, Peter Reinacher, Charlotte Roy, Armin Brandt, Andreas Schulze-Bonhage, Linglin Yang, Shuang Wang, Jing Liu, Gui Xue and Nikolai Axmacher
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Daniel Pacheco-Estefan: Ruhr University Bochum
Marie-Christin Fellner: Ruhr University Bochum
Lukas Kunz: University Hospital Bonn
Hui Zhang: Ruhr University Bochum
Peter Reinacher: University of Freiburg
Charlotte Roy: University of Freiburg
Armin Brandt: University of Freiburg
Andreas Schulze-Bonhage: University of Freiburg
Linglin Yang: Zhejiang University
Shuang Wang: Zhejiang University
Jing Liu: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Gui Xue: Beijing Normal University
Nikolai Axmacher: Ruhr University Bochum

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-20

Abstract: Abstract Visual working memory depends on both material-specific brain areas in the ventral visual stream (VVS) that support the maintenance of stimulus representations and on regions in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) that control these representations. How executive control prioritizes working memory contents and whether this affects their representational formats remains an open question, however. Here, we analyzed intracranial EEG (iEEG) recordings in epilepsy patients with electrodes in VVS and PFC who performed a multi-item working memory task involving a retro-cue. We employed Representational Similarity Analysis (RSA) with various Deep Neural Network (DNN) architectures to investigate the representational format of prioritized VWM content. While recurrent DNN representations matched PFC representations in the beta band (15–29 Hz) following the retro-cue, they corresponded to VVS representations in a lower frequency range (3–14 Hz) towards the end of the maintenance period. Our findings highlight the distinct coding schemes and representational formats of prioritized content in VVS and PFC.

Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-52541-w

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