Event Abstract Back to Event Neural correlate of filtration of irrelevant information from visual working memory Shahin Nasr1, 2*, A. Moeeny1, 2 and H. Esteky1, 2, 3 1 School of Cognitive Sciences, IPM, Iran 2 Research Center for Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Shaheed Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Iran 3 Neuroscience Research Center , Shaheed Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Iran Previous studies have shown that frontal cortex and basal ganglia are critical in blocking irrelevant information from entering working memory (WM) when their irrelevancy is clear from the beginning of the task. But, in a dynamic environment stimulus task relevancy could be altered through time, making some potentially useful stimuli irrelevant to the task in a later stage. Here we examined the neural basis of irrelevant information filtration from working memory (WM) by recording human ERP during a visual change detection task in which the stimulus irrelevancy was revealed in a later stage of the task forcing the subjects to keep all of the information in WM until test object set was presented. Assessing subjects’ behavior we found that subjects’ RT was highly correlated with the number of irrelevant objects and not the relevant one, pointing to the notion that filtration, and not selection, process was used to handle the distracting effect of irrelevant objects. Examination of our ERP data we found that frontal N150 and parietal N200 peak latencies increased systematically as the amount of irrelevancy load increased. In this condition, frontal N150 peak latency was better correlated to the number of irrelevant objects while parietal N200 was better correlated with subjects’ RT. The difference between frontal N150 and parietal N200 peak latencies varied with the amount of irrelevancy load suggesting that functional connectivity between modules underlying fronto-parietal potentials vary concomitant with the irrelevancy load. On the basis of these results we suggest a network of fronto-parietal potentials, with dynamic functional connectivity, to be responsible for filtration of irrelevant information from WM. In this dynamic network frontal potentials represent the processes underlying irrelevant objects detection while parietal potentials are more related to those processes underlying elimination of irrelevant objects from WM. Conference: 10th International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience, Bodrum, Turkey, 1 Sep - 5 Sep, 2008. Presentation Type: Oral Presentation Topic: Memory & Learning Citation: Nasr S, Moeeny A and Esteky H (2008). Neural correlate of filtration of irrelevant information from visual working memory. Conference Abstract: 10th International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience. doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.09.2009.01.256 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 09 Dec 2008; Published Online: 09 Dec 2008. * Correspondence: Shahin Nasr, School of Cognitive Sciences, IPM, Tehran, Iran, sh_nasr@ipm.ir Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Shahin Nasr A. Moeeny H. Esteky Google Shahin Nasr A. Moeeny H. Esteky Google Scholar Shahin Nasr A. Moeeny H. Esteky PubMed Shahin Nasr A. Moeeny H. Esteky Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.