Abstract
ABSTRACT Working memory (WM) is important for guiding behaviour, but not always for the next possible action. Here we define a WM item that is currently relevant for guiding behaviour as the functionally “active” item; whereas items maintained in WM, but not immediately relevant to behaviour, are defined as functionally “latent”. Traditional neurophysiological theories of WM proposed that content is maintained via persistent neural activity (e.g., stable attractors); however, more recent theories have highlighted the potential role for “activity-silent” mechanisms (e.g., short-term synaptic plasticity). Given these somewhat parallel dichotomies, functionally active and latent cognitive states of WM have been associated with storage based on persistent-activity and activity-silent neural mechanisms, respectively. However, in this article we caution against a one-to-one correspondence between functional and activity states. We argue that the principal theoretical requirement for active and latent WM is that the corresponding neural states play qualitatively different functional roles. We consider a number of candidate solutions, and conclude that the neurophysiological mechanisms for functionally active and latent WM items are theoretically independent of the distinction between persistent activity-based and activity-silent forms of WM storage.
Highlights
Information held in working memory (WM) is usually relevant for guiding future behaviour, but not necessarily the upcoming action
We argue that the principal theoretical requirement for active and latent Working memory (WM) is that the corresponding neural states play qualitatively different functional roles
We argue that the principal requirement for distinguishing functionally active from latent WM is that the neural state of active WM
Summary
Information held in working memory (WM) is usually relevant for guiding future behaviour, but not necessarily the upcoming action. Question 2 still needs to be stored in memory so that you can answer it eventually. Both need to be robustly encoded and maintained, but only the relevant one should directly influence your current behaviour. We define the memory item that is currently relevant as the “active” item, in the sense that it actively guides ongoing behaviour. We define items maintained but not acted upon as “latent” items, meaning that they should not influence current processing. Latent items have the potential to be brought into an active state once the need arises, but until are stored in a robust yet dormant format.
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