Directing the mind's eye: prefrontal, inferior and medial temporal mechanisms for visual working memory.
Human and nonhuman primates have a remarkable ability to recall, maintain and manipulate visual images in the absence of external sensory stimulation. Evidence from lesion, single-unit neurophysiological and neuroimaging studies shows that these visual working memory processes are consistently associated with sustained activity in object-selective inferior temporal neurons. Furthermore, results from these studies suggest that mnemonic activity in the inferior temporal cortex is, in turn, supported by top-down inputs from multimodal regions in prefrontal and medial temporal cortex, and under some circumstances, from the hippocampus.
Ranganath
Charan
C
Center for Neuroscience and Department of Psychology, University of California at Davis, 1544 Newton Ct., Davis, CA 95616, USA. cranganath@ucdavis.edu
D'Esposito
Mark
M
D000818:Animals; D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*