Abstract
In a previous study, Harris et al. (2002) found disruption of vibrotactile short-term memory after applying single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to primary somatosensory cortex (SI) early in the maintenance period, and suggested that this demonstrated a role for SI in vibrotactile memory storage. While such a role is compatible with recent suggestions that sensory cortex is the storage substrate for working memory, it stands in contrast to a relatively large body of evidence from human EEG and single-cell recording in primates that instead points to prefrontal cortex as the storage substrate for vibrotactile memory. In the present study, we use computational methods to demonstrate how Harris et al.'s results can be reproduced by TMS-induced activity in sensory cortex and subsequent feedforward interference with memory traces stored in prefrontal cortex, thereby reconciling discordant findings in the tactile memory literature.
Highlights
Vibrotactile short-term memory [often referred to as vibrotactile working memory (VWM)] is a powerful paradigm for studying the behavioral and neural correlates of working and short-term memory (Bancroft et al, 2011a)
Sensory noise affects STM storage suggested that stimuli tend to be stored in relevant regions of cortex that have pre-existing representations of that type of stimulus, such as sensory cortex; in order to account for recent experimental findings, we have recently suggested that less complex stimuli with simple neural codes instead tend to be stored in prefrontal cortex (Bancroft et al, 2014)
Rather than SI being a storage medium for vibrotactile memory, we suggest that the application of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) induces or increases activity in sensory cortex (both in SI and in secondary somatosensory cortex (SII), via feedforward connections), and that this activity interferes with VWM storage in PFC
Summary
Vibrotactile short-term memory [often referred to as vibrotactile working memory (VWM)] is a powerful paradigm for studying the behavioral and neural correlates of working and short-term memory (Bancroft et al, 2011a). Various studies by the research group of Romo et al have suggested that regions in prefrontal cortex are the storage substrate used during VWM tasks and that no representation of the stored stimulus persists across the delay period in SI (see Romo and Salinas, 2003, for a review), and recent EEG studies by Spitzer and colleagues have reported being able to decode the frequency of a stored vibrational stimulus from prefrontal beta-band activity during the delay period of VWM (and other scalar STM) tasks (Spitzer et al, 2010, 2014; Spitzer and Blankenburg, 2011, 2012).
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