Transient and sustained activity in a distributed neural system for human working memory

Susan M. Courtney, Leslie G. Ungerleider, Katrina Keil and James V. Haxby
Additional contact information
Susan M. Courtney: Laboratory of Brain and Cognition
Leslie G. Ungerleider: Laboratory of Brain and Cognition
Katrina Keil: Laboratory of Brain and Cognition
James V. Haxby: Laboratory of Brain and Cognition

Nature, 1997, vol. 386, issue 6625, 608-611

Abstract: Abstract Working memory involves the short-term maintenance of an active representation of information so that it is available for further processing. Visual working memory tasks, in which subjects retain the memory of a stimulus over brief delays, require both the perceptual encoding of the stimulus and the subsequent maintenance of its representation after the stimulus is removed from view. Such tasks activate multiple areas in visual and prefrontal cortices1–9. To delineate the roles these areas play in perception and working memory maintenance, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to obtain dynamic measures of neural activity related to different components of a face working memory task—non-selective transient responses to visual stimuli, selective transient responses to faces, and sustained responses over memory delays. Three occipitotemporal areas in the ventral object vision pathway had mostly transient responses to stimuli, indicating their predominant role in perceptual processing, whereas three prefrontal areas demonstrated sustained activity over memory delays, indicating their predominant role in working memory. This distinction, however, was not absolute. Additionally, the visual areas demonstrated different degrees of selectivity, and the prefrontal areas demonstrated different strengths of sustained activity, revealing a continuum of functional specialization, from occipital through multiple prefrontal areas, regarding each area's relative contribution to perceptual and mnemonic processing.

Date: 1997
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/386608a0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:386:y:1997:i:6625:d:10.1038_386608a0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/386608a0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().