Given a changing visual environment, and the limited capacity of visual working memory (VWM), the contents of VWM must be in constant flux. Using a change detection task, the authors show that VWM is subject to obligatory updating in the face of new information. Change detection performance is enhanced when the item that may change is retrospectively cued 1 s after memory encoding and 0.5 s bef...

Many studies on working memory have assumed that one can determine an individual's fixed memory capacity. In the current study, we took an individual differences approach to investigate whether visual working memory (VWM) capacity was stable irrespective of the number of to-be-remembered objects and participant age. Younger and older adults performed a change detection task using several object...

Behavioral evidence from the young suggests spatial cues that orient attention toward task-relevant items in visual working memory (VWM) enhance memory capacity. Whether older adults can also use retrospective cues ("retro-cues") to enhance VWM capacity is unknown. In the current event-related potential (ERP) study, young and old adults performed a VWM task in which spatially informative retro-...

Verbal working memory (VWM) engages frontal and temporal/parietal circuits subserving the phonological loop, as well as, superior and inferior cerebellar regions which have projections from these neocortical areas. Different cerebro-cerebellar circuits may be engaged for integrating aurally- and visually-presented information for VWM. The present fMRI study investigated load (2, 4, or 6 letters...

Color is the most frequently studied feature in visual working memory (VWM). Oddly, much of this work de-emphasizes perception, instead making simplifying assumptions about the inputs served to memory. We question these assumptions in light of perception research, and we identify important points of contact between perception and working memory in the case of color. Better characterization of i...

The encoding of information into visual working memory (VWM) is not only a prerequisite step for efficient working memory, it is also considered to limit our ability to attend to, and be consciously aware of, task-relevant events. Despite its important role in visual cognition, the neural mechanisms underlying visual working memory encoding have not yet been specifically dissociated from those ...

Visual working memory (VWM) helps to temporarily represent information from the visual environment and is severely limited in capacity. Recent work has linked various forms of neural activity to the ongoing representations in VWM. One piece of evidence comes from human event-related potential studies, which find a sustained contralateral negativity during the retention period of VWM tasks. This...

OBJECTIVE This study aimed to investigate the relationships between brain functions and verbal working memory (VWM) impairments in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). METHODS Functional magnetic resonance imaging was performed on 15 healthy controls and 15 patients with TLE while they performed the N-back task in order to compare the brain areas that were activated during VWM. Diffusi...

OBJECTIVE We aimed to compare Theory of Mind (ToM) functions and investigate the relationship between ToM functions and verbal working memory (VWM) in first degree relatives of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia patients. METHOD The sample consisted of first degree relatives of patients with bipolar disorder (n=22), schizophrenia (n=28), and age, gender, education and total IQ matched healthy...

Although many of our perceptual biases stem from long-term, repeated exposure, current theories of visual search assume a central role for visual working memory (VWM) in guiding attention to target information. Crucially, whether a VWM representation guides attention depends on the relative priority that the memory has within VWM. Here, in a combined visual search/VWM task, we used attentional ...