Evidence map›Paper›PMID 34942647›Full record

ArticleJournal of cognitive neuroscience2022

Behavioral Prioritization Enhances Working Memory Precision and Neural Population Gain.

Aspen H Yoo, Alfredo Bolaños, Grace E Hallenbeck, Masih Rahmati, Thomas C Sprague, Clayton E Curtis

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
14citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

14 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.

  1. Pooled it
  2. Article
  3. Article
  4. Article
  5. Allocation of spatial attention in human visual cortex as a function of endogenous cue validity.Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior · 2025
    Article
  6. Prioritizing Working Memory Resources Depends on the Prefrontal Cortex.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025
    Article
  7. Prioritizing working memory resources depends on prefrontal cortex.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024
    Article
  8. Article
  9. Trying Harder: How Cognitive Effort Sculpts Neural Representations during Working Memory.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024
    Article
  10. Article
  11. Article
  12. Predicted utility modulates working memory fidelity in the brain.Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior · 2023
    Article
  13. Common Neural Mechanisms Control Attention and Working Memory.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2022
    Article
  14. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

6 authors.

Aspen H YooNew York University.
Alfredo BolañosNew York University.
Grace E HallenbeckNew York University.
Masih RahmatiNew York University.
Thomas C SpragueUniversity of California, Santa Barbara.
Clayton E CurtisNew York University.

Funding

Putting Priority Map Theory to the TestR01EY016407 · NEI · NEW YORK UNIVERSITY · PI CURTIS, CLAYTON E · 2006 to 2023
$5.8M
TRAINING IN VISUAL NEUROSCIENCET32EY007136 · NEI · NEW YORK UNIVERSITY · PI J ANTHONY MOVSHON · 1993 to 2026
$5.3M
Deep sampling of cognitive effects in the human visual systemR01EY034118 · NEI · UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA · PI CLAYTON E CURTIS, Kendrick Norris Kay · 2023 to 2026
$1.9M
The Nature of Working Memory RepresentationsR01EY033925 · NEI · NEW YORK UNIVERSITY · PI CURTIS, CLAYTON E · 2022 to 2025
$1.5M
Neural decoding of working memoryR01EY027925 · NEI · NEW YORK UNIVERSITY · PI CURTIS, CLAYTON E, MA, WEI JI · 2017 to 2020
$1.3M
Effects of behavioral priority on working memory representationsF32EY028438 · NEI · NEW YORK UNIVERSITY · PI SPRAGUE, THOMAS C · 2017 to 2018
$77k
NEI NIH HHS F32 EY-028438NEI NIH HHS F32 EY028438NEI NIH HHS R01 EY-016407NEI NIH HHS R01 EY016407NEI NIH HHS R01 EY027925NEI NIH HHS R01 EY033925NEI NIH HHS R01 EY034118NEI NIH HHS T32 EY007136NEI NIH HHS T32EY007136-27
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Humans allocate visual working memory (WM) resource according to behavioral relevance, resulting in more precise memories for more important items. Theoretically, items may be maintained by feature-tuned neural populations, where the relative gain of the populations encoding each item determines precision. To test this hypothesis, we compared the amplitudes of delay period activity in the different parts of retinotopic maps representing each of several WM items, predicting the amplitudes would track behavioral priority. Using fMRI, we scanned participants while they remembered the location of multiple items over a WM delay and then reported the location of one probed item using a memory-guided saccade. Importantly, items were not equally probable to be probed (0.6, 0.3, 0.1, 0.0), which was indicated with a precue. We analyzed fMRI activity in 10 visual field maps in occipital, parietal, and frontal cortex known to be important for visual WM. In early visual cortex, but not association cortex, the amplitude of BOLD activation within voxels corresponding to the retinotopic location of visual WM items increased with the priority of the item. Interestingly, these results were contrasted with a common finding that higher-level brain regions had greater delay period activity, demonstrating a dissociation between the absolute amount of activity in a brain area and the activity of different spatially selective populations within it. These results suggest that the distribution of WM resources according to priority sculpts the relative gains of neural populations that encode items, offering a neural mechanism for how prioritization impacts memory precision.

Indexed as

Memory, Short-TermVisual PerceptionFrontal LobeHumansMagnetic Resonance ImagingMental RecallSaccades

Identifiers

PMID34942647
PMCPMC9017245

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

None linked

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.