RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Joint representation of working memory and uncertainty in human cortex
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.04.05.438511
DO 10.1101/2021.04.05.438511
A1 Hsin-Hung Li
A1 Thomas C. Sprague
A1 Aspen H. Yoo
A1 Wei Ji Ma
A1 Clayton E. Curtis
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/04/05/2021.04.05.438511.abstract
AB Neural representations of visual working memory (VWM) are noisy, and thus, decisions based on VWM are inevitably subject to uncertainty. However, the mechanisms by which the brain simultaneously represents the content and uncertainty of memory remain largely unknown. Here, inspired by the theory of probabilistic population codes, we test the hypothesis that the human brain represents an item maintained in VWM as a probability distribution over stimulus feature space, thereby capturing both its content and uncertainty. We used a neural generative model to decode probability distributions over memorized locations from fMRI activation patterns. We found that the mean of the probability distribution decoded from retinotopic cortical areas predicted memory reports on a trial-by-trial basis. Moreover, in several of the same mid-dorsal stream areas the spread of the distribution predicted subjective trial-by-trial uncertainty judgments. These results provide evidence that VWM content and uncertainty are jointly represented by probabilistic neural codes.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.