Right-sided representational neglect after left brain damage in a case without visuo-spatial working memory deficits

Visuospatial working memory (VSWM) deficit under high working memory (WM) load deserves further investigation as a potential trait marker for bipolar disorder (BPD). However, VSWM performances may depend on basic neurocognitive processes and are possibly compromised by neurocognitive effects of psychotropic medications. A total of 32 remitted BPD patients and 39 healthy controls undertook parametric VSWM tasks and assessments for selective attention, sustained attention, psychomotor speed, mental flexibility, and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III full IQ. Using a multivariate model and trend analysis and controlling for other basic neurocognitive ability, the effects of mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, GABAergic agonists, and anticholinergics on VSWM performances were explored by post-hoc analysis comparing performances across WM loads between healthy controls and patients treated and not treated with a specific medication. Remitted BPD patients showed more pronounced performance declines in VSWM performances as WM loads increased, indicating inefficient VSWM processing. The VSWM deficits of remitted patients were independent of their impairments in attentional processes or psychomotor speed. Among the medications, only GABAergic agonists were associated with impaired VSWM performances. Remitted BPD patients had WM-load-dependent VSWM processing deficits after controlling for neurocognitive performances. As these deficits were associated with the use of GABAergic agonists, altered GABAergic neurotransmission might be involved with the underlying mechanisms of the impaired VSWM processing of BPD. Since GABAergic agonist use is often continued from the acute to the remitted phase in BPD and might potentially affect the functional recovery, clinicians should be aware of these neurocognitive side effects, even at low dosages. Close monitoring and timely discontinuation of GABAergic agonists is of utmost importance for clinical practice.

Verbal working memory and executive deficits have been observed in ecstasy users. The present study sought to establish whether these also extended to visuo-spatial working memory. Thirty-six current ecstasy users, 12 former users (abstinent for at least 6 months) and 31 individuals that had never used ecstasy were tested on a maintenance plus type visuo-spatial working memory task. The task required participants to recall a sequence of specially marked cells in a four-by-four matrix display while at the same time performing a concurrent visual judgement task. Both the current and former user groups registered impairments relative to nonusers. These remained significant following statistical controls for a range of potentially confounding variables including the use of various other drugs during the 3 months prior to testing. Users were unimpaired on a simple spatial span measure suggesting that the deficits observed reflected the executive aspects of the spatial working memory task. Also consistent with executive involvement, statistical controls for measures of verbal working memory performance (computation span) removed half of the ecstasy-related variance in spatial working memory. The possibility that the pattern of results obtained might reflect some general impairment in information processing efficiency is discussed.

Event Abstract Back to Event Action hypersensitivity: Disturbed self-other integration in schizophrenia Javier De La Asuncion1, Jean-Philippe Van Dijck1, 2*, Manuel Morrens1, Bernard Sabbe1 and Ellen De Bruijn1 1 University of Antwerp, Collaborative Antwerp Psychiatric Research Institute (CAPRI), Belgium 2 Ghent University, Experimental Psychology, Belgium It is well known that schizophrenia is characterized by a wide variety of social cognitive deficits. Typically these deficits in social cognition are believed to account for a wide variety of delusions and hallucinations. Problems in low-level social processes such as self-other integration may underlie these higher-level deficits. Research focusing on actual interacting individuals is scarce and to our knowledge, only one study investigated self-other integration in schizophrenia during a joint setting in schizophrenic patients. Using a spatial variant of the social Simon task, where the to-be categorized stimuli were triangles pointing towards the left or right, it has been demonstrated that schizophrenic patients do not show a social Simon effect, suggesting that self-other integration is absent (Liepelt et al., 2012). Importantly however, schizophrenia is also characterized by deficits in spatial cognition, making it likely that the nature of the stimuli hindered a proper measurement of the social Simon effect. In two experiments, we further investigated self-other integration in schizophrenia using a non-spatial variant of the social Simon task with colors. During the first experiment, 16 healthy controls and 15 schizophrenia patients performed a social Simon in both a joint and an individual (go/nogo) setting. Patients showed an enlarged Simon effect in the joint setting that could not be attributed to general slowing. In Experiment 2, the social nature of this enlarged effect was further investigated. For this purpose, 29 healthy controls and 35 schizophrenia patients performed a social and a regular Simon task. Here again, a selective enlargement of the Simon effect in the social condition was observed. These outcomes indicate that schizophrenia patients have deficits in low-level processes required for successful joint action, but in contrast to previous research, these observations suggest that self-other integration deficits in these patients are merely the result of hypersensitivity towards the social environment in a way that it affects their own action planning during joint task performance. References Liepelt. R., et al. (2012). Action blind: Disturbed self-other integration in schizophrenia. Neuropsychologia, 50, 3775-3780. Keywords: social cognition, Schizophrenia, Social Simon effect, Self-other integration, Action Planning Conference: Belgian Brain Council 2014 MODULATING THE BRAIN: FACTS, FICTION, FUTURE, Ghent, Belgium, 4 Oct - 4 Oct, 2014. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Clinical Neuroscience Citation: De La Asuncion J, Van Dijck J, Morrens M, Sabbe B and De Bruijn E (2014). Action hypersensitivity: Disturbed self-other integration in schizophrenia. Conference Abstract: Belgian Brain Council 2014 MODULATING THE BRAIN: FACTS, FICTION, FUTURE. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2014.214.00079 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 01 Jul 2014; Published Online: 02 Sep 2014. * Correspondence: Dr. Jean-Philippe Van Dijck, Ghent University, Experimental Psychology, Ghent, 9000, Belgium, jeanphilippe.vandijck@ugent.be Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Javier De La Asuncion Jean-Philippe Van Dijck Manuel Morrens Bernard Sabbe Ellen De Bruijn Google Javier De La Asuncion Jean-Philippe Van Dijck Manuel Morrens Bernard Sabbe Ellen De Bruijn Google Scholar Javier De La Asuncion Jean-Philippe Van Dijck Manuel Morrens Bernard Sabbe Ellen De Bruijn PubMed Javier De La Asuncion Jean-Philippe Van Dijck Manuel Morrens Bernard Sabbe Ellen De Bruijn Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Impaired executive function (EF) is suggested to be one of the core features in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD); however, little is known about whether the extent of worse EF in ASD than typically developing (TD) controls is age-dependent. We used age-stratified analysis to reveal this issue. We assessed 111 youths with ASD (aged 12.5 ± 2.8 years, male 94.6%) and 114 age-, and sex-matched TD controls with Digit Span and four EF tasks of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB): Spatial Span (SSP), Spatial Working Memory (SWM), Stockings of Cambridge (SOC), and Intradimensional/Extradimensional Shift Test (I/ED). Compared to TD controls, youths with ASD performed poorer on the Digit Span, SWM, SOC, and I/ED tasks. The performance of all the tasks improved with age for both groups. Age-stratified analyses were conducted due to significant age × group interactions in visuospatial planning (SOC) and set-shifting (I/ED) and showed that poorer performance on these two tasks in ASD than TD controls was found only in the child (aged 8-12 years) rather than the adolescent (aged 13-18 years) group. By contrast, youths with ASD had impaired working memory, regardless of age. The increased magnitude of group difference in visuospatial planning (SOC) with increased task demands differed between the two age groups but no age moderating effect on spatial working memory. Our findings support deficits in visuospatial working memory and planning in youths with ASD; however, worse performance in set-shifting may only be demonstrated in children with ASD.

The differential relationship between visual and spatial working memory in children's mathematics performance

Current models of spatial neglect focus on deficits in the patients' horizontal or midsagittal plane. However, other evidence suggests that patients with temporo-parietal lesions centered on the parieto-insular-vestibular cortex show disturbed spatial perception of the subjective visual vertical and oblique orientation discrimination in another spatial plane, the frontal plane. As the relationship between neglect and spatial orientation deficits is unclear, we examined how patients with and without visual neglect perform visuospatial tasks in the roll plane and how their performance is related to neglect. Thirteen patients with predominantly right parietal lesions and left-sided neglect, 14 control patients without neglect after right-hemispheric cerebral lesions (RBD-controls), 11 patients without neglect after left-hemispheric lesions (LBD-controls), 3 patients with right-sided neglect after left parietal lesions, and 12 normal subjects were investigated. Constant errors and difference thresholds were measured with a PC-based system when the subjects had to adjust a luminous line to their subjective visual vertical, subjective visual horizontal, and in relation to an obliquely oriented reference line. Subjects were oriented with their head and body earth-vertical while sitting in a chair in total darkness. Patients with left-sided as well as those with right-sided neglect showed a significant, in most cases contraversive, tilt of the three spatial orientations (about 5 degrees counterclockwise in the left neglect group and 5.5 degrees-8.5 degrees clockwise in the right neglect group). In contrast, the two patient groups without neglect as well as the normal subjects showed nearly perfect visuospatial judgements with constant errors of less than 0.8 degrees . Difference thresholds were significantly elevated in patients with left neglect and in two of three patients with right-sided neglect, whereas normal control subjects and both control patient groups without neglect performed indistinguishably, having thresholds of one-tenth of those of the neglect patients. Tilt of all three spatial axes was significantly related to the severity of neglect (mean r for unsigned errors, 0.74; for difference thresholds, 0.40), indicating a significant contribution to the symptomatology of left and right spatial neglect. These results indicate a close although not necessarily causal link between spatial orientation deficits in the frontal plane and hemispatial neglect in patients with left or right parietal lesions, surpassing the well-documented impairments of these patients in the horizontal plane.

Few studies have assessed visuo-spatial working memory and inhibition in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) by recording saccades and consequently little additional knowledge has been gathered on oculomotor functioning in ADHD. Moreover, this is the first study to report the performance of non-affected siblings of children with ADHD, which may shed light on the familiality of deficits. A total of 14 boys with ADHD, 18 non-affected brothers, and 15 control boys aged 7-14 years, were administered a memory-guided saccade task with delays of three and seven seconds. Familial deficits were found in accuracy of visuo-spatial working memory, percentage of anticipatory saccades, and tendency to overshoot saccades relative to controls. These findings suggest memory-guided saccade deficits may relate to a familial predisposition for ADHD.

Central sensitization (CS) is increasingly recognized as a key mechanism underlying chronic low back pain (CLBP), and has been linked to disturbed sleep, psychological distress, altered hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis function, low-grade inflammation, and cognitive dysfunction. However, few studies have simultaneously examined these domains in patients with different levels of CS compared with pain-free individuals. In this cross-sectional study, adults with CLBP were classified into severe and mild CS groups using the Central Sensitization Inventory and were compared with healthy controls. Sleep quality, psychological distress, and pain-related cognition were assessed using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21, and pain measures. Morning salivary cortisol, interleukin-6 (IL-6), and fasting blood glucose were obtained as biological markers, and cognitive performance was evaluated using the Corsi Block-Tapping and Tower of London tasks. Group differences were analyzed using one-way ANOVA with Tukey post-hoc tests. Forty-two participants (patients with CLBP and pain-free controls) completed the study. Compared with both mild CS patients and controls, the severe CS group showed markedly poorer sleep quality and higher levels of psychological distress. Morning cortisol concentrations were significantly elevated only in the severe CS group, whereas no statistically significant differences were detected for fasting glucose or IL-6 between groups. On the Corsi Block-Tapping task, healthy controls outperformed both CS groups, indicating reduced visuospatial working memory in patients, whereas no significant group differences were observed on the Tower of London planning task. Severe central sensitization in CLBP is associated with poor sleep, increased emotional distress, elevated morning cortisol, and deficits in visuospatial working memory, even in the absence of clear differences in IL-6 or fasting glucose. These findings support a biopsychosocial profile characterized by both neuroendocrine and cognitive alterations in patients with high levels of CS and highlight potential targets for multimodal assessment and intervention.

Event Abstract Back to Event Primary motor cortex mapping in brain-lesioned patients using MEG resting-state functional connectivity Nicolas Coquelet1*, Vincent Wens1, Mathieu Bourguignon1, 2, Evelien Carrette3, Marc Op De Beeck1, Brice Marty1, Patrick Van Bogaert1, Serge Goldman1 and Xavier De Tiège1 1 Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium 2 Aalto University School of Science, Finland 3 Ghent University, Belgium Introduction: The use of resting-state activity for preoperative functional mapping represents a potential alternative to task-related localization in brain-lesioned patients, which requires minimal patients’ collaboration, avoids task-performance confounds and allows investigating several brain systems. This study tested the ability of magnetoencephalography (MEG) resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) analysis to map the primary motor hand area (M1ha) in a group of presurgical patients. This method is based on the strong resting-state connectivity between the left and right M1ha. Methods: MEG resting-state data were recorded with a whole-scalp MEG (Elekta) in 10 presurgical patients (5 females, mean age: 37.7 years) with focal (6 patients) or hemispheric (3 patients) brain lesions, or refractory neuropathic pain (1 patient) (duration: 373±147s (mean±std), eyes open: 7 patients, eyes closed: 3 patients). MEG data (bandpass: 0.1-45Hz) were corrected for eye-movement and cardiac artifacts using independent component analysis. Source reconstruction was performed using a spherical conductor model determined from patient’s MRI and β-band (12-21 Hz) Minimum Norm Estimation. M1ha seed-based rsFC maps were obtained using slow source Hilbert envelope correlation from a seed located in the non-affected M1ha (MNI coordinates based on functional mapping literature). The localization of the correlation maximum in the hemisphere contralateral to the seed was compared to classical MEG or fMRI functional indicator(s). Results: In all patients, rsFC maps displayed inter-hemispheric resting-state connectivity. In 7 patients, a good concordance between the correlation global maximum located in the hemisphere contralateral to the seed and functional indicator(s) was found (cf. figure 1 for an example). In 1 patient, one local correlation maximum co-localized with functional indicators. Conclusion: This study suggests that MEG resting-state is able to map the M1ha in presurgical patients with brain disorders. Therefore, MEG resting-state might represent an interesting alternative to task-related functional mapping that should be considered as an additional functional indicator in the armamentarium of MEG M1ha mapping methods. Figure 1 Keywords: ongoing activity, Magnetoencephalography, Functional motor mapping, functional connectivity, primary motor cortex Conference: Belgian Brain Council 2014 MODULATING THE BRAIN: FACTS, FICTION, FUTURE, Ghent, Belgium, 4 Oct - 4 Oct, 2014. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Clinical Neuroscience Citation: Coquelet N, Wens V, Bourguignon M, Carrette E, Op De Beeck M, Marty B, Van Bogaert P, Goldman S and De Tiège X (2014). Primary motor cortex mapping in brain-lesioned patients using MEG resting-state functional connectivity. Conference Abstract: Belgian Brain Council 2014 MODULATING THE BRAIN: FACTS, FICTION, FUTURE. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2014.214.00007 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 24 Jun 2014; Published Online: 25 Jun 2014. * Correspondence: Mr. Nicolas Coquelet, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, 1070, Belgium, nico.coquelet@gmail.com Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Nicolas Coquelet Vincent Wens Mathieu Bourguignon Evelien Carrette Marc Op De Beeck Brice Marty Patrick Van Bogaert Serge Goldman Xavier De Tiège Google Nicolas Coquelet Vincent Wens Mathieu Bourguignon Evelien Carrette Marc Op De Beeck Brice Marty Patrick Van Bogaert Serge Goldman Xavier De Tiège Google Scholar Nicolas Coquelet Vincent Wens Mathieu Bourguignon Evelien Carrette Marc Op De Beeck Brice Marty Patrick Van Bogaert Serge Goldman Xavier De Tiège PubMed Nicolas Coquelet Vincent Wens Mathieu Bourguignon Evelien Carrette Marc Op De Beeck Brice Marty Patrick Van Bogaert Serge Goldman Xavier De Tiège Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Event Abstract Back to Event Visual working memory in people with stuttering: ERP study Maria Pyasik1*, Stanislav Kozlovskiy1, Alexander Vartanov1 and Janna Glozman1 1 Lomonosov Moscow State University, Psychology, Russia Recent studies show, that working memory functioning is impaired in people with stuttering (Bajaj, 2007; Kaganovich et al. 2010). However, there is still no certain neurophysiological explanation of this fact. Participants in the study were 10 people with stuttering and 10 people without any speech impairments (8 men and 2 women in each subject group, mean age - 25,3±4,8 years old). We performed computer neuropsychological testing of visual working memory capacity. Subjects’ goal was to remember three simultaneously presented for 1000 ms visual stimuli and then find them in the same sequence among 16-20 similar stimuli after a 1200 ms delay. The test consisted of two series, which differed in stimuli type - complex geometric figures and words; the stimuli were based on A.R. Luria’s neuropsychological assessment materials. During the computer test event-related potentials were registered for the stimuli presentation. We compared the percentage of correct answers in the test between subject groups; event-related potentials were averaged for each part of the test and also compared between subject groups (the significance of the differences in ERP amplitudes was evaluated with Student’s t-test). According to the results of the test, visual working memory capacity in stuttering is significantly lower in comparison to the control subjects for memorizing complex geometric figures, while memorizing words did not reveal any significant differences. ERP amplitudes differ significantly between subject groups on the 400-600 ms interval post-stimulus for the ‘geometric figures’ part of the test; for the second part of the test there were no significant differences in ERP amplitudes. Furthermore, the coordinates of electrical activity dipole sources for 400-600 ms interval were calculated with BrainLoc 6.0 program (dipole coefficient > 0.95). For both parts of the test and both subject groups activation of orbitofrontal cortex and occipital lobe was revealed. However, the activation of orbitofrontal cortex in control subjects was stronger during more difficult part of the test than during the easier one, whereas in stuttering this activation was weaker (smaller amount of dipoles were revealed) regardless of the task difficulty. It can be speculated, that the resources of the central executive of working memory are limited in stuttering, which does not affect the performance in simple tasks but causes trouble during the difficult ones. Acknowledgements This study was supported by Russian Humanitarian Science Foundation (RHSF) project # 13-06-00570. Keywords: visual working memory, Stuttering, orbitofrontal cortex, Event-related potentials, source localization Conference: ACNS-2013 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Society Conference, Clayton, Melbourne, Australia, 28 Nov - 1 Dec, 2013. Presentation Type: Oral Topic: Memory Citation: Pyasik M, Kozlovskiy S, Vartanov A and Glozman J (2013). Visual working memory in people with stuttering: ERP study. Conference Abstract: ACNS-2013 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Society Conference. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2013.212.00174 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 15 Oct 2013; Published Online: 25 Nov 2013. * Correspondence: Ms. Maria Pyasik, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Psychology, Moscow, Russia, maria.pyasik@unito.it Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Maria Pyasik Stanislav Kozlovskiy Alexander Vartanov Janna Glozman Google Maria Pyasik Stanislav Kozlovskiy Alexander Vartanov Janna Glozman Google Scholar Maria Pyasik Stanislav Kozlovskiy Alexander Vartanov Janna Glozman PubMed Maria Pyasik Stanislav Kozlovskiy Alexander Vartanov Janna Glozman Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Visuospatial working memory assessment using a digital tablet in adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Stronger activation and deactivation in archery experts for differential cognitive strategy in visuospatial working memory processing

The role of verbal and visuospatial working memory in rule-based and information-integration category learning was examined. Previously, Maddox, Ashby, Ing, and Pickering found that a sequentially presented verbal working memory task did not affect information-integration learning, but disrupted rule-based learning when the rule was on the spatial frequency of a Gabor stimulus. This pattern was replicated in Experiment 1, in which the same category structures were used, but in which the verbal working memory task was replaced with a visuospatial analog. Experiment 2A examined rule-based learning on an oblique orientation and also found both verbal and visuospatial working memory tasks disrupting learning. Experiment 2B examined rule-based learning on a cardinal orientation and found a minimal effect of the verbal working memory task, but a large effect of the visuospatial working memory task. The conceptual significance of cardinal orientations and the role of visuospatial and verbal working memory in category learning are discussed.

The impact of negative affect on working memory performance is unclear. Visuospatial and verbal working memory are critical in many settings, but may be impaired during exposure to negative stimuli. In Experiment 1, the impact of task-irrelevant negative picture stimuli on verbal compared to visuospatial working memory performance was investigated. Unexpectedly, visuospatial memory performance was superior for trials containing negative stimuli than trials with neutral stimuli. The impact of negative picture stimuli on visuospatial working memory was further examined in Experiment 2. Performance was again superior for negative stimuli relative to neutral stimuli. While much previous research has reported that negative affect is disruptive of visuospatial working memory, the improved performance found here is consistent with other research particularly where negative or arousing stimuli are thought to increase the pool of available processing resources or effort. Implications for contexts where working memory demands occur alongside distressing stimuli are discussed, as well as future research suggestions.

It is unclear to what extent sensory processing areas are involved in the maintenance of sensory information in working memory (WM). Previous studies have thus far relied on finding neural activity in the corresponding sensory cortices, neglecting potential activity-silent mechanisms, such as connectivity-dependent encoding. It has recently been found that visual stimulation during visual WM maintenance reveals WM-dependent changes through a bottom-up neural response. Here, we test whether this impulse response is uniquely visual and sensory-specific. Human participants (both sexes) completed visual and auditory WM tasks while electroencephalography was recorded. During the maintenance period, the WM network was perturbed serially with fixed and task-neutral auditory and visual stimuli. We show that a neutral auditory impulse-stimulus presented during the maintenance of a pure tone resulted in a WM-dependent neural response, providing evidence for the auditory counterpart to the visual WM findings reported previously. Interestingly, visual stimulation also resulted in an auditory WM-dependent impulse response, implicating the visual cortex in the maintenance of auditory information, either directly or indirectly, as a pathway to the neural auditory WM representations elsewhere. In contrast, during visual WM maintenance, only the impulse response to visual stimulation was content-specific, suggesting that visual information is maintained in a sensory-specific neural network, separated from auditory processing areas.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Working memory is a crucial component of intelligent, adaptive behavior. Our understanding of the neural mechanisms that support it has recently shifted: rather than being dependent on an unbroken chain of neural activity, working memory may rely on transient changes in neuronal connectivity, which can be maintained efficiently in activity-silent brain states. Previous work using a visual impulse stimulus to perturb the memory network has implicated such silent states in the retention of line orientations in visual working memory. Here, we show that auditory working memory similarly retains auditory information. We also observed a sensory-specific impulse response in visual working memory, while auditory memory responded bimodally to both visual and auditory impulses, possibly reflecting visual dominance of working memory.