title: Parietal and Frontal Cortex Encode Stimulus-Specific Mnemonic Representations during Visual Working Memory.
abstract: Working memory (WM) enables the storage and manipulation of information in an active state. WM storage has long been associated with sustained increases in activation across a network of frontal and parietal cortical regions. However, recent evidence suggests that these regions primarily encode information related to general task goals rather than feature-selective representations of specific memoranda. These goal-related representations are thought to provide top-down feedback that coordinates the representation of fine-grained details in early sensory areas. Here, we test this model using fMRI-based reconstructions of remembered visual details from region-level activation patterns. We could reconstruct high-fidelity representations of a remembered orientation based on activation patterns in occipital visual cortex and in several sub-regions of frontal and parietal cortex, independent of sustained increases in mean activation. These results challenge models of WM that postulate disjoint frontoparietal "top-down control" and posterior sensory "feature storage" networks.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, 92093, USA. Electronic address: eester@ucsd.edu.
authors.forename: Edward F
authors.initials: EF
authors.lastname: Ester
authors.affiliation: Neurosciences Graduate Program, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, 92093, USA.
authors.forename: Thomas C
authors.initials: TC
authors.lastname: Sprague
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, 92093, USA; Neurosciences Graduate Program, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, 92093, USA. Electronic address: jserences@ucsd.edu.
authors.forename: John T
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Serences
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult