Abstract
Effective working memory (WM) functioning depends on the gating process that regulates the balance between maintenance and updating of WM. The present study used the event-based eye-blink rate (ebEBR), which presumably reflects phasic striatal dopamine activity, to examine how the cognitive processes of gating and updating separately facilitate flexible updating of WM contents and the potential involvement of dopamine in these processes. Real-time changes in eye blinks were tracked during performance on the reference-back task, in which demands on these two processes were independently manipulated. In all three experiments, trials that required WM updating and trials that required gate switching were both associated with increased ebEBR. These results may support the prefrontal cortex basal ganglia WM model (PBWM) by linking updating and gating to striatal dopaminergic activity. In Experiment 3, the ebEBR was used to determine what triggers gate switching. We found that switching to an updating mode (gate opening) was more stimulus driven and retroactive than switching to a maintenance mode, which was more context driven. Together, these findings show that the ebEBR – an inexpensive, non-invasive, easy-to-use measure – can be used to track changes in WM demands during task performance and, hence, possibly striatal dopamine activity.
Highlights
In line with the prefrontal cortex basal ganglia WM model (PBWM) model, a large body of work has shown that DA serves an important role both in supporting the maintenance of and updating working memory (WM) as well as in their coordination
These initial findings indicate that the eventbased eye-blink rate (ebEBR) is dynamically modulated by WM processes known to depend on DA activity, it is unclear to what extent these findings extend to the adult brain
We demonstrated that the ebEBR, an inexpensive, non-invasive and easy-to-use measure that presumably reflects striatal dopamine activity[26, 30, 40, 49], can be used to track changes in demands on WM during task performance
Summary
In line with the PBWM model, a large body of work has shown that DA serves an important role both in supporting the maintenance of and updating WM as well as in their coordination. The reference-back task is a novel paradigm that allows for separation of processes related to WM updating from processes related to gate opening and closing This task is composed of two types of trials, reference and comparison, which are indicated by different colors (e.g., a red or blue frame surrounding the stimulus, respectively; see Fig. 1). We aimed to determine whether it is possible to prepare for gate opening and closing before the stimulus is presented This was tested by cuing the condition, by presenting a colored frame (indicating the trial-type) for 4-sec prior to the presentation of the probe (X or O). Context-driven gating would result from a more proactive strategy, whereby the stimulus is not a crucial element of the decision, but rather, the context is sufficient
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