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Goal-dependent dissociation of visual and prefrontal cortices during working memory

Nature Neuroscience volume 16, pages 997–999 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

To determine the specific contribution of brain regions to working memory, human participants performed two distinct tasks on the same visually presented objects. During the maintenance of visual properties, object identity could be decoded from extrastriate, but not prefrontal, cortex, whereas the opposite held for nonvisual properties. Thus, the ability to maintain information during working memory is a general and flexible cortical property, with the role of individual regions being goal-dependent.

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Figure 1: Experimental design.
Figure 2: Nature of maintained information.
Figure 3: Decoding of object identity.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the US National Institute of Mental Health Intramural Research Program. Thanks to S. Marrett and S. Inati for help with data acquisition, E. Bilger and E. Aguila for data collection, A. Harel and A. Martin for comments and members of the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition for discussion.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Brain and Cognition, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA

    Sue-Hyun Lee, Dwight J Kravitz & Chris I Baker

Authors
  1. Sue-Hyun Lee
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  2. Dwight J Kravitz
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  3. Chris I Baker
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Contributions

S.-H.L., D.J.K. and C.I.B. designed the research. S.-H.L. performed the research and analyzed the data. D.J.K. contributed analytic tools. C.I.B. supervised the project. S.-H.L., D.J.K. and C.I.B. wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sue-Hyun Lee.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary Figures 1–5 and Supplementary Table 1 (PDF 3027 kb)

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Lee, SH., Kravitz, D. & Baker, C. Goal-dependent dissociation of visual and prefrontal cortices during working memory. Nat Neurosci 16, 997–999 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3452

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