Visual working memory, which can only hold three of four objects at a time, is thought to be based on synchronized brain activity across a network of brain regions. Now a new study has allowed us to get a better picture of how exactly that works. Both the maintenance and the contents of working memory were connected to brief synchronizations of neural activity in alpha, beta and gamma brainwaves across frontoparietal regions that underlie executive and attentional functions and visual areas in the occipital lobe. Most interestingly, individual VWM capacity could be predicted by synchrony in a network centered on the intraparietal sulcus.
Human working memory is based on dynamic interaction networks in the brain
Reference
Palva, M., Monto, S., Kulashekhar, S., & Palva, S. (2010). Neuronal synchrony reveals working memory networks and predicts individual memory capacity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(16), 7580-7585. Retrieved from http://www.pnas.org/content/107/16/7580.abstract
Related News
Neurofeedback offers hope for attention training
I’ve always been intrigued by neurofeedback training. But when it first raised its head, technology was far less sophisticated. Now a new study has used real-time functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) feedback from the rostrolateral prefrontal cortex to improve people's ability to control their thoughts and focus their attention.
Older adults have better implicit memory
A study involving 125 younger (average age 19) and older (average age 69) adults has revealed that while younger adults showed better explicit learning, older adults were better at implicit learning. Implicit memory is our unconscious memory, which influences behavior without our awareness.
A good mood reduces working memory capacity
Following earlier research suggesting mood affects attention, a new study tries to pin down exactly what it’s affecting.
To induce different moods, participants were shown either a video of a stand-up comedy routine or an instructional video on how to install flooring. This was followed by two tests, one of working memory capacity (the Running Memory Span), during which numbers are presented through headphones at a rate of four numbers per second ending with subjects asked to recall the last six numbers in order, and one of response inhibition (the Stroop task).
Why multitasking is more difficult with age
Comparison of young adults (mean age 24.5) and older adults (mean age 69.1) in a visual memory test involving multitasking has pinpointed the greater problems older adults have with multitasking. The study involved participants viewing a natural scene and maintaining it in mind for 14.4 seconds. In the middle of the maintenance period, an image of a face popped up and participants were asked to determine its sex and age. They were then asked to recall the original scene.
Working memory has more layers than thought
Readers of my books and articles will know that working memory is something I get quite excited about. It’s hard to understate the importance of working memory in our lives. Now a new study tells us that working memory is in fact made up of three areas: a core focusing on one active item, a surrounding area holding at least three more active items (called the outer store), and a wider region containing passive items that have been tagged for later retrieval.
People are poor at predicting their learning
Research has shown that people are generally poor at predicting how likely they are to remember something. A recent study tested the theory that the reason we’re so often inaccurate is that we make predictions about memory based on how we feel while we're encountering the information to be learned, and that can lead us astray.
Brief diversions vastly improve focus
We’ve all experienced the fading of our ability to concentrate when we’ve been focused on a task for too long. The dominant theory of why this should be so has been around for half a century, and describes attention as a limited resource that gets ‘used up’. Well, attention is assuredly a limited resource in the sense that you only have so much of it to apply. But is it limited in the sense of being used up and needing to refresh? A new study indicates that it isn’t.
Gestures provide a helping hand in problem solving
In the first of three experiments, 132 students were found to gesture more often when they had difficulties solving mental rotation problems. In the second experiment, 22 students were encouraged to gesture, while 22 were given no such encouragement, and a further 22 were told to sit on their hands to prevent gesturing. Those encouraged to gesture solved more mental rotation problems.
A positive mood allows your brain to think more creatively
A link between positive mood and creativity is supported by a study in which 87 students were put into different moods (using music and video clips) and then given a category learning task to do (classifying sets of pictures with visually complex patterns). There were two category tasks: one involved classification on the basis of a rule that could be verbalized; the other was based on a multi-dimensional pattern that could not easily be verbalized.
Cognitive recovery after brain damage more complex than realized
When stroke or brain injury damages a part of the brain controlling movement or sensation or language, other parts of the brain can learn to compensate for this damage. It’s been thought that this is a case of one region taking over the lost function. Two new studies show us the story is not so simple, and help us understand the limits of this plasticity.