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Poster Session A: Tuesday, August 12, 1:30 – 4:30 pm, de Brug & E‑Hall

‘NOT GATE’, Not ‘GATE’: Long-term Memory Interplay with Working Memory via Reversal Coding

Shengyuan Wang¹, Yingchao Zhang, Xiaowei Ding; ¹SUN YAT-SEN UNIVERSITY

Presenter: Shengyuan Wang

Working memory (WM) is capacity-limited but can recruit long-term memory (LTM) to overcome such limitations. A critical question regarding this interplay is: how does LTM content flow into WM? Specifically, while recruiting LTM content that aligns with the current WM task is beneficial, recruiting inconsistent LTM content might impair performance. In this study, we investigated this question using EEG and the inverted encoding model to decode both WM and LTM content in real time. Contrary to the mainstream ‘flexible gate’ hypothesis, which suggests that a gate selectively allows beneficial LTM content to enter WM, we found that LTM content was consistently decoded, regardless of whether it was beneficial. Importantly, LTM content was represented in a reversed manner (inhibition) compared to WM content (activation). We supported this reversal coding of LTM functions to minimize interference with WM, benefiting WM performance. Our findings challenge the ‘flexible gate’ theory and suggest a ‘NOT gate’ mechanism regarding how LTM interplays with WM, where the coding of LTM content is systematically reversed after entering WM.

Topic Area: Memory, Spatial Cognition & Skill Learning

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