ArticleNature communications2025
Perturbing human V1 degrades the fidelity of visual working memory.
Article in Nature communications, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Working Memory Impairment Induced by Chemotherapy-A Narrative Review.Brain sciences · 2026Review
- Visual field map size constrains working memory precision.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Frontotemporal bursting supports human working memory.NeuroImage · 2026Article
- Transient increases to apparent contrast by exogenous attention persist in visual working memory.Journal of vision · 2025Article
- Prioritizing Working Memory Resources Depends on the Prefrontal Cortex.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Feedback scales the spatial tuning of cortical responses during both visual working memory and long-term memory.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Prioritizing working memory resources depends on prefrontal cortex.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Advancing working memory research through cortico-cortical transcranial magnetic stimulation.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2024Article
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Abstract
Decades of macaque research established the importance of prefrontal cortex for working memory. Surprisingly, recent human neuroimaging studies demonstrated that the contents of working memory can be decoded from primary visual cortex (V1). However the necessity of this mnemonic information remains unknown and contentious. Here we provide causal evidence that transcranial magnetic stimulation targeting human V1 disrupted the fidelity of visual working memory. Errors increased only for targets remembered in the portion of the visual field disrupted by stimulation. Moreover, concurrently measured electroencephalography confirmed that stimulation disrupted not only memory behavior, but neurophysiological signatures of working memory. These results change the question from whether visual cortex is necessary for working memory to what mechanisms it uses to support memory. Moreover, they point to models in which the mechanisms supporting working memory are distributed across brain regions, including sensory areas that here we show are critical for memory storage.
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