Selective impairment in visual short-term memory binding

Abstract

Dissociations within binding in perception have been reported after brain damage. In short-term memory (STM), feature binding and feature processing appear to rely on separate processes. However, dissociations within binding in STM following brain damage have not been reported to date. We report on the case E.S. who, after removal of a left medial sphenoid ridge meningioma, developed a selective impairment of visual STM (VSTM) binding. We found that, despite having normal perceptual binding, E.S. was unable to retain in VSTM features bound into objects while she could retain individual features as well as controls did (Experiments 1–2, 4, and 6). Her verbal STM for bound and single features remains intact (Experiments 3 and 5). E.S.'s performance suggests that STM binding can be dissociated from STM for single features across visual and verbal domains. The results are discussed in the light of current models of STM.