Maintenance of relational information in working memory leads to suppression of the sensory cortex

Working memory (WM) for sensory-based information about individual objects and their locations appears to involve interactions between lateral prefrontal and sensory cortexes. The mechanisms and representations for maintenance of more abstract, nonsensory information in WM are unknown, particularly...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of neurophysiology 2014-10, Vol.112 (8), p.1903-1915
Main Authors: Ikkai, Akiko, Blacker, Kara J, Lakshmanan, Balaji M, Ewen, Joshua B, Courtney, Susan M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Alpha Rhythm
Attention - physiology
Cerebral Cortex - physiology
Electroencephalography
Female
Higher Neural Functions and Behavior
Humans
Male
Memory, Short-Term - physiology
Space Perception - physiology
Young Adult
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Summary:Working memory (WM) for sensory-based information about individual objects and their locations appears to involve interactions between lateral prefrontal and sensory cortexes. The mechanisms and representations for maintenance of more abstract, nonsensory information in WM are unknown, particularly whether such actively maintained information can become independent of the sensory information from which it was derived. Previous studies of WM for individual visual items found increased electroencephalogram (EEG) alpha (8-13 Hz) power over posterior electrode sites, which appears to correspond to the suppression of cortical areas that represent irrelevant sensory information. Here, we recorded EEG while participants performed a visual WM task that involved maintaining either concrete spatial coordinates or abstract relational information. Maintenance of relational information resulted in higher alpha power in posterior electrodes. Furthermore, lateralization of alpha power due to a covert shift of attention to one visual hemifield was marginally weaker during storage of relational information than during storage of concrete information. These results suggest that abstract relational information is maintained in WM differently from concrete, sensory representations and that during maintenance of abstract information, posterior sensory regions become task irrelevant and are thus suppressed.
ISSN:0022-3077
1522-1598
DOI:10.1152/jn.00134.2014