Neural indices of online and offline states in human working memory

家长助学金项目摘要 视觉工作记忆是维持当前的主动表征的中枢认知系统 相关信息。工作记忆能力的个体差异反映了核心认知能力，如图所示 通过与流动智力、学业成绩和其他广泛的智力指标之间的强大相关性 功能。此外，工作记忆缺陷是许多普遍存在的精神健康障碍的标志， 如注意力缺陷/多动障碍(ADHD)、精神分裂症和抑郁症。因此，一个详细的 了解这一系统对于了解这些障碍的认知影响以及 准确评估临床干预措施的效果。 这项提议的广泛目标是加强我们对索引存储中的神经信号的理解 这个在线记忆系统，并使用这些信号来完善人类记忆的认知模型。一把钥匙 最近的发现是，索引存储在工作记忆中的电生理信号可以是 分为两个截然不同的类别。一类活动跟踪离散的“物品”的数量或 对象，而不考虑与每个对象相关联的特定信息 对象。第二类活动则跟踪当前在 视野，而不考虑占据这些位置的独立物体的数量。建议数 这项研究将进一步完善人类工作记忆的神经模型和认知模型。 最后，虽然工作记忆在复杂认知中起着关键作用，但有一个明确的共识是 工作记忆必须与不同的记忆系统相互作用(例如，长期记忆) 那些存储信息的人要么离线，要么忘乎所以。虽然过去的工作经常寻求允许 “纯”评估工作记忆或长时记忆，有很强的工作需要，直接 考察了这些系统之间的动态协作。因此，该项目的一个中心主题将是 确定鼓励在在线和离线内存状态之间转换的特定因素。 具体地说，该提案将对过去的工作采取后续行动，这些工作表明，观察员将持续不断地 经验转化为离散的“事件”表示，事件之间的边界影响哪些 信息片段被集成并在内存中隔离。此项目将使用时间分辨 工作记忆中存储的电生理测量，以确定事件边界是否提示 刷新在线记忆，以便为后续事件的信息让路，即使存在 有足够的容量用于并发存储。这将为具体的认知操作提供新的见解 这决定了在复杂的认知任务中，有限的在线记忆容量是如何分配的。

PARENT GRANT PROJECT SUMMARY Visual working memory is a central cognitive system for maintaining active representations about currently relevant information. Individual differences in working memory ability reflect a core cognitive ability, as shown by robust correlations with fluid intelligence, scholastic achievement and other broad measures of intellectual function. Furthermore, working memory deficits are a signature of many prevalent mental health disorders, such as attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), schizophrenia and depression. Thus, a detailed understanding of this system is important for understanding the cognitive effects of these disorders, and for precise assessments of the efficacy of clinical interventions. The broad goal of this proposal is to enhance our understanding of the neural signals that index storage in this online memory system, and to use those signals to refine cognitive models of human memory. A key recent discovery is that the electrophysiological signals that index storage in working memory can be divided into two distinct categories. One class of activity tracks the number of discrete “items” or objects that are stored in working memory, without regard to the specific information associated with each object. A second class of activity instead tracks the spatial positions that are currently prioritized in the visual field, without regard to the number of independent objects occupying those positions. The proposed work will pursue this insight, refining both neural and cognitive models of human working memory. Finally, while working memory plays a critical role in complex cognition, there is a clear consensus that working memory must interact with qualitatively different memory systems (e.g., long term memory) that store information “offline” or out of mind. While past work has often sought paradigms that allow a “pure” assessment of working memory or long term memory, there is a strong need for work that directly examines the dynamic collaboration between these systems. Thus, a central theme of this project will be to identify the specific factors that encourage transitions between online and offline memory states. Specifically, the proposal will follow up on past work showing that observers divide up ongoing continuous experiences into discrete “event” representations, and that the boundaries between events influence which pieces of information are integrated and segregated in memory. This project will use time-resolved electrophysiological measures of storage in working memory to determine whether event boundaries prompt the flushing of online memories to make way for information about subsequent events, even when there is adequate capacity for concurrent storage. This will provide new insight into the specific cognitive operations that determine how limited online memory capacity is deployed in complex cognitive tasks.