Neural suppression of irrelevant information underlies optimal working memory performance.
Neural suppression of irrelevant information underlies optimal working memory performance.
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无关信息的神经抑制是最佳的工作记忆表现。
DOI：
10.1523/jneurosci.4621-08.2009
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发表时间：
2009-03-11
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Gazzaley A
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Zanto TP;Gazzaley A
我们将注意力集中在与任务相关的信息上并忽略干扰的能力反映在感觉皮层神经活动的差异增强和抑制（即自上而下的调制）上。这种选择性的、以目标为导向的活动调节可能与记忆密切相关，因此注意力的焦点会通过限制不相关刺激的干扰而影响成功维持相关信息的可能性。尽管最近的研究阐明了注意力和记忆之间的机制重叠，但工作记忆（WM）编码过程中视觉处理自上而下的调制与随后的识别性能之间的关系尚未建立。在这里，我们提供了健康年轻人的神经生理学证据，表明早期视觉处理（刺激开始后 < 200 毫秒）的自上而下调节与随后的 WM 表现密切相关，因此成功记住相关信息的可能性与限制不相关刺激的干扰有关。未能忽略干扰因素对识别性能的影响在两种基于特征的记忆（运动方向和颜色）中得到了复制。此外，在 WM 维持期间，对不相关刺激的关注在神经上反映为记忆负荷的增加。这些结果表明，相关信息的神经增强并不是高水平表现的主要决定因素，而是最佳的 WM 表现取决于通过神经抑制有效过滤不相关信息，以防止有限的记忆容量超载。
Our ability to focus attention on task-relevant information and ignore distractions is reflected by differential enhancement and suppression of neural activity in sensory cortex (i.e., top-down modulation). Such selective, goal-directed modulation of activity may be intimately related to memory, such that the focus of attention biases the likelihood of successfully maintaining relevant information by limiting interference from irrelevant stimuli. Despite recent studies elucidating the mechanistic overlap between attention and memory, the relationship between top-down modulation of visual processing during working memory (WM) encoding and subsequent recognition performance has not yet been established. Here, we provide neurophysiological evidence in healthy, young adults that top-down modulation of early visual processing (< 200 ms from stimulus onset) is intimately related to subsequent WM performance, such that the likelihood of successfully remembering relevant information is associated with limiting interference from irrelevant stimuli. The consequences of a failure to ignore distractors on recognition performance was replicated for two types of feature-based memory, motion direction and color. Moreover, attention to irrelevant stimuli was reflected neurally during the WM maintenance period as an increased memory load. These results suggest that neural enhancement of relevant information is not the primary determinant of high-level performance, but rather, optimal WM performance is dependent on effectively filtering irrelevant information through neural suppression to prevent overloading a limited memory capacity.