Chapter 5 - Neural Bases of the Short-term Retention of Visual Information

Abstract

The sensory-recruitment hypothesis holds that the short-term retention of visual information is accomplished by the same networks responsible for the real-time perceptual analysis of such information. A corollary of this view is that the elevated delay-period activity in the frontal and parietal cortex that are often observed during tests of short-term and working memory may not correspond to the information storage, per se, of information. Recent studies applying multivariate analyses to functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalograph data from humans, and to extracellular recordings from monkeys, have generated findings consistent with both of these ideas. At the level of mechanism, some of these studies have also called into question the long-standing assumption that sustained activity is the basis for the short-term retention of information. In view of this, alternative ideas based on transient synaptic weight-based mechanisms for neural representation are considered. We are at the precipice of exciting, potentially revolutionary breakthroughs in our understanding of how the brain supports short-term and working-memory behaviors.