ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2018
Drift in Neural Population Activity Causes Working Memory to Deteriorate Over Time.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 48 papers.
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Who cites it
48 citing papers in PubMed.
- Intrinsic rewards guide visual resource allocation via reinforcement learning.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Redundant prefrontal hemispheres adapt storage strategy to working memory demands.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Better performance when recalling speed from object motion compared to texture motion.Journal of vision · 2026Article
- Visual field map size constrains working memory precision.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Article
- Dynamics of working memory drift and information flow across the cortical hierarchy.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Two Molecularly Defined Neuronal Types in the Mammillary Body Govern Different Temporal Periods during Working Memory Maintenance.Research (Washington, D.C.) · 2026Article
- Facial feature representations in visual working memory: A reverse correlation study.Journal of vision · 2025Article
- Transient increases to apparent contrast by exogenous attention persist in visual working memory.Journal of vision · 2025Article
- Hierarchical Neural Circuit Theory of Normalization and Inter-areal Communication.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Regulation of working memory switches from striatal dopamine D2-receptor to D1-receptor neurons under high cognitive load.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Modality-, feature-, and strategy-dependent organization of low-level working memory.Journal of vision · 2025Article
- Role of long-term memory in object-based attention for the maintenance of binding in visual working memory.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Dissecting the components of error in analogue report tasks.Behavior research methods · 2024Article
- Sensory-memory interactions via modular structure explain errors in visual working memory.eLife · 2024Article
- Article
- Linking Cognitive Integrity to Working Memory Dynamics in the Aging Human Brain.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Article
- Representation and computation in visual working memory.Nature human behaviour · 2024Review
- Article
- A signal-detection account of item-based and ensemble-based visual change detection: A reply to Harrison, McMaster, and Bays.Journal of vision · 2024Article
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Abstract
Short-term memories are thought to be maintained in the form of sustained spiking activity in neural populations. Decreases in recall precision observed with increasing number of memorized items can be accounted for by a limit on total spiking activity, resulting in fewer spikes contributing to the representation of each individual item. Longer retention intervals likewise reduce recall precision, but it is unknown what changes in population activity produce this effect. One possibility is that spiking activity becomes attenuated over time, such that the same mechanism accounts for both effects of set size and retention duration. Alternatively, reduced performance may be caused by drift in the encoded value over time, without a decrease in overall spiking activity. Human participants of either sex performed a variable-delay cued recall task with a saccadic response, providing a precise measure of recall latency. Based on a spike integration model of decision making, if the effects of set size and retention duration are both caused by decreased spiking activity, we would predict a fixed relationship between recall precision and response latency across conditions. In contrast, the drift hypothesis predicts no systematic changes in latency with increasing delays. Our results show both an increase in latency with set size, and a decrease in response precision with longer delays within each set size, but no systematic increase in latency for increasing delay durations. These results were quantitatively reproduced by a model based on a limited neural resource in which working memories drift rather than decay with time.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.