title: Active maintenance of associative mnemonic signal in monkey inferior temporal cortex.
abstract: We investigated the contribution of the inferior temporal (IT) cortical neurons to the active maintenance of internal representations. The activity of single neurons in the IT cortex was recorded while the monkeys performed a sequential-type associative memory task in which distractor stimuli interrupted the delay epoch between the cue and target (paired-associate) stimuli. For each neuron, information about each stimulus conveyed by the delay activity was estimated as a coefficient of multiple regression analysis. We found that target information derived from long-term memory (LTM) persisted despite the distractors. By contrast, cue information derived from the visual system was attenuated and frequently replaced by distractor information. These results suggest that LTM-derived information required for upcoming behavior is actively maintained in the IT neurons, whereas visually derived information tends to be updated irrespective of behavioral relevance.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology, The University of Tokyo School of Medicine, 7-3-1 Hongo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan.
authors.forename: Masaki
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Takeda
authors.forename: Yuji
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Naya
authors.forename: Ryoko
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Fujimichi
authors.forename: Daigo
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Takeuchi
authors.forename: Yasushi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Miyashita
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology; D003463:Cues; D004594:Electrophysiology; D008251:Macaca; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012044:Regression Analysis; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*