Decoding reveals the contents of visual working memory in early visual areas

Stephenie A. Harrison and Frank Tong ()
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Stephenie A. Harrison: Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37240, USA
Frank Tong: Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37240, USA

Nature, 2009, vol. 458, issue 7238, 632-635

Abstract: Seeing is remembering Although we can hold several different items in working visual memory, how we remember specific details and visual features of individual objects remains a mystery. The neurons in the higher-order areas responsible for working memory seem to exhibit no selectivity for visual detail, and the early visual areas of the cerebral cortex are uniquely able to process incoming visual signals from the eye but, it was thought, not to perform higher cognitive functions such as memory. Using a new technique for decoding data from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Stephanie Harrison and Frank Tong have found that early visual areas can retain specific information about features held in working memory. Volunteers were shown two striped patterns at different orientations and asked to memorize one of the orientations whilst being scanned by fMRI. From analysis of the scans it was possible to predict which of the two orientation patterns a subject was being retained in over 80% of tests.

Date: 2009
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DOI: 10.1038/nature07832

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