Abstract
Adaptive behavior requires the separation of current from future goals in working memory. We used fMRI of object-selective cortex to determine the representational (dis)similarities of memory representations serving current and prospective perceptual tasks. Participants remembered an object drawn from three possible categories as the target for one of two consecutive visual search tasks. A cue indicated whether the target object should be looked for first (currently relevant), second (prospectively relevant), or if it could be forgotten (irrelevant). Prior to the first search, representations of current, prospective and irrelevant objects were similar, with strongest decoding for current representations compared to prospective (Experiment 1) and irrelevant (Experiment 2). Remarkably, during the first search, prospective representations could also be decoded, but revealed anti-correlated voxel patterns compared to currently relevant representations of the same category. We propose that the brain separates current from prospective memories within the same neuronal ensembles through opposite representational patterns.
Highlights
Adaptive human behavior requires the representation of both imminent and future goals in response to changing task requirements
Studies using multi-variate pattern analyses (MVPA) of functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography (EEG) data have shown that while representations required for an upcoming memory test can be readily decoded, the evidence for items required for a prospective task temporarily drops to baseline levels until they become relevant again (LaRocque et al, 2013; LaRocque et al, 2017; Lewis-Peacock and Postle, 2012)
Working memory representations have been shown to adapt to the specific task goal, as the representation of the same object changes depending on the nature of the upcoming test (Lee et al, 2013; Myers et al, 2017)
Summary
Adaptive human behavior requires the representation of both imminent and future goals in response to changing task requirements. Studies using multi-variate pattern analyses (MVPA) of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) data have shown that while representations required for an upcoming memory test can be readily decoded, the evidence for items required for a prospective task temporarily drops to baseline levels until they become relevant again (LaRocque et al, 2013; LaRocque et al, 2017; Lewis-Peacock and Postle, 2012) These and other findings have led to the hypothesis that items in working memory may adopt different states or representational formats
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