ArticleNature neuroscience2020
Interplay between persistent activity and activity-silent dynamics in the prefrontal cortex underlies serial biases in working memory.
Article in Nature neuroscience, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 144 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
144 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 279 citations in OpenAlex.
- Serial dependence in visual perception: A meta-analysis and review.Journal of vision · 2023Pooled it
- Penny for your thoughts: A review and proposed model of socioeconomic status, working memory and worry.The British journal of developmental psychology · 2026Review
- Differential roles of frontoparietal regions in working memory and decision-making.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Working Memory States Modulate Arithmetic Estimation Strategy Processing: Evidence from Visual and Articulatory Interference.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Effects of sleep quality on the offline storage state of visual working memory.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Article
- Redundant prefrontal hemispheres adapt storage strategy to working memory demands.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Serial dependence during visuomotor integration is robust to the passage of time and interference from intervening tasks.Memory & cognition · 2026Article
- Antibody-Mediated Mechanisms in Autoimmune Neurological Disorders.The European journal of neuroscience · 2026Review
- Time, space and feature similarity determine attractive and repulsive serial biases in trustworthiness impressions.BMC biology · 2026Article
- Prior Trial Effects on Working Memory in Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, and Healthy Control Individuals.JAMA psychiatry · 2026Article
- Human intracranial correlates of dynamic coding in auditory working memory.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Past and present goals are represented concurrently during visual search.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Clashing memories in working memory modulate serial dependence.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Article
- The late positive potential is associated with serial dependence effects in facial identity.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- History bias and its perturbation of the stimulus representation in the macaque prefrontal cortex.The Journal of physiology · 2026Article
- Large-scale mega-analysis indicates that serial dependence deteriorates perceptual decision-making.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Asynchronous firing and off states in working memory maintenance.Cell reports · 2026Article
- Mapping and modulating brain dynamics in aging and neurodegeneration with electroencephalography and integrated neurotechnologies in primates.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Review
84 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Persistent neuronal spiking has long been considered the mechanism underlying working memory, but recent proposals argue for alternative 'activity-silent' substrates. Using monkey and human electrophysiology data, we show here that attractor dynamics that control neural spiking during mnemonic periods interact with activity-silent mechanisms in the prefrontal cortex (PFC). This interaction allows memory reactivations, which enhance serial biases in spatial working memory. Stimulus information was not decodable between trials, but remained present in activity-silent traces inferred from spiking synchrony in the PFC. Just before the new stimulus, this latent trace was reignited into activity that recapitulated the previous stimulus representation. Importantly, the reactivation strength correlated with the strength of serial biases in both monkeys and humans, as predicted by a computational model that integrates activity-based and activity-silent mechanisms. Finally, single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation applied to the human PFC between successive trials enhanced serial biases, thus demonstrating the causal role of prefrontal reactivations in determining working-memory behavior.
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Registered trials
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.