Pinging the brain with visual impulses reveals electrically active, not activity-silent, working memories
Fig 1
Decoding from alpha power reveals an underlying, active working memory code.
(A) Strength of stimulus decoding from raw voltage traces as in [7]. As in the original study, unattended or (B) discarded memories cannot be decoded from raw voltage traces. (C, D) Same as (A) and (B), but decoding from alpha power (Methods), which reveals a sustained representation of the unattended stimulus. In (A) and (C), we analyze data from experiment 2 [7], while in (B) and (D), data from experiment 1 [7]. Light gray bars mark stimulus presentation periods. Notice that data immediately preceding pinging stimulus presentation are shown in this figure. Dashed lines mark the periods in which memories are irrelevant for upcoming behavior, following an instruction cue (dark green). All error bars are bootstrapped SEM, and color bars on the top mark the periods where bootstrapped 95% CI was above zero. Data from Wolff and colleagues (2017) [7].