"Leader-Follower" Dynamic Perturbation Manipulates Multi-Item Working Memory in Humans

Overview

Journal eNeuro

Specialty Neurology

Date 2023 Nov 1

PMID 37914409

Authors

Qiaoli Huang

Minghao Luo

Yuanyuan Mi

Huan Luo

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Manipulating working memory (WM) is a central yet challenging notion. Previous studies suggest that WM items with varied memory strengths reactivate at different latencies, supporting a time-based mechanism. Motivated by this view, here we developed a purely bottom-up "Leader-Follower" behavioral approach to manipulate WM in humans. Specifically, task-irrelevant flickering color disks that are bound to each of the memorized items are presented during the delay period, and the ongoing luminance sequences of the color disks follow a Leader-Follower relationship, that is, a hundreds of milliseconds temporal lag. We show that this dynamic behavioral approach leads to better memory performance for the item associated with the temporally advanced luminance sequence (Leader) than the item with the temporally lagged luminance sequence (Follower), yet with limited effectiveness. Together, our findings constitute evidence for the essential role of temporal dynamics in WM operation and offer a promising, noninvasive WM manipulation approach.

Citing Articles

The synaptic correlates of serial position effects in sequential working memory.

Zhou J, Gong L, Huang X, Mu C, Mi Y Front Comput Neurosci. 2024; 18:1430244.

PMID: 39077153 PMC: 11284078. DOI: 10.3389/fncom.2024.1430244.

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