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Concurrent maintenance of both veridical and transformed working memory representations

Güven Kandemir, View ORCID ProfileMichael J. Wolff, View ORCID ProfileAytaç Karabay, Mark G. Stokes, View ORCID ProfileNikolai Axmacher, View ORCID ProfileElkan G. Akyürek
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.10.28.514218
Güven Kandemir
1Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
2Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Michael J. Wolff
3Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
4Ernst Strüngmann Institute (ESI) for Neuroscience in Cooperation with Max Planck Society, Frankfurt, Germany
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Aytaç Karabay
1Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
5Department of Psychology, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
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Mark G. Stokes
3Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
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Nikolai Axmacher
6Department of Neuropsychology, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany
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Elkan G. Akyürek
1Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
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  • For correspondence: e.g.akyurek@rug.nl
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Abstract

In a dynamic environment, the already limited information that human working memory can maintain needs to be constantly updated to optimally guide behaviour. Indeed, previous studies showed that working memory representations are continuously being transformed during delay periods leading up to a response. This goes hand-in-hand with the removal of task-irrelevant items. However, does such removal also include veridical, original stimuli, as they were prior to transformation? Here we aimed to assess the neural representation of task-relevant transformed representations, compared to the no-longer-relevant veridical representations they originated from. We applied multivariate pattern analysis to electroencephalographic data during maintenance of orientation gratings with and without mental rotation. During maintenance, we perturbed the representational network by means of a visual impulse stimulus, and were thus able to successfully decode veridical as well as imaginary, transformed orientation gratings from impulse-driven activity. On the one hand, the impulse response reflected only task-relevant (cued), but not task-irrelevant (uncued) items, suggesting that the latter were quickly discarded from working memory. By contrast, even though the original cued orientation gratings were also no longer task-relevant after mental rotation, these items continued to be represented next to the rotated ones, in different representational formats. This seemingly inefficient use of scarce working memory capacity was associated with reduced probe response times and may thus serve to increase precision and flexibility in guiding behaviour in dynamic environments.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Footnotes

  • ↵* shared first authorship

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted October 28, 2022.
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Concurrent maintenance of both veridical and transformed working memory representations
Güven Kandemir, Michael J. Wolff, Aytaç Karabay, Mark G. Stokes, Nikolai Axmacher, Elkan G. Akyürek
bioRxiv 2022.10.28.514218; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.10.28.514218
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Concurrent maintenance of both veridical and transformed working memory representations
Güven Kandemir, Michael J. Wolff, Aytaç Karabay, Mark G. Stokes, Nikolai Axmacher, Elkan G. Akyürek
bioRxiv 2022.10.28.514218; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.10.28.514218

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