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

Putting Working Memory to Work

Ziyi Duan¹, Nathan Tardiff, Clayton E. Curtis; ¹New York University

Presenter: Ziyi Duan

Goal-directed behavior depends on the ability to flexibly change mental representations in working memory. Here, we combined neuroimaging and computational models to test the hypothesis that working memory contents can be transformed in multiple brain regions in service of task demands, including spatial remapping and mental rotation. We found: 1) response amplitudes tracked task-relevant spatial locations both before and after spatial remapping; 2) multivoxel response patterns contained more rotated than original orientation information after mental rotations. Besides, this orientation transformation existed across visual field maps, especially in the fovea. These results suggested that working memory representations can be flexibly transformed to achieve task goals.

Topic Area: Memory, Spatial Cognition & Skill Learning

Extended Abstract: Full Text PDF