Visual working memory for connected 3D objects: effects of stimulus complexity, dimensionality and connectivity

How do verbal descriptions affect visual memory over the short and long term? Here we show for the first time that verbal labeling can boost visual memories, but the source of this benefit depends on whether representations are maintained over the short term in visual working memory or over the long term in visual long-term memory. Across three experiments, we contrasted color memory of randomly colored objects when participants labeled (a) the color, (b) the object, or (c) the color-object binding, to memory under an articulatory suppression condition inhibiting labeling. Memory was tested at two time points: after three objects (visual working memory) and at the end of the experiment (visual long-term memory). In Experiment 1, color labeling improved, whereas object labeling impaired, visual working memory in comparison to suppression. Visual long-term memory remained unchanged across conditions. Experiment 2 tested whether this was attributable to poor overall long-term learning by repeating the colored objects over three successive working memory trials. This increased performance over the short and long term, yet labeling did not change learning rate over repetitions or delayed memory performance, showing no long-term memory benefit. In Experiment 3, a labeling benefit was observed when the color-object binding was labeled both over the short and long term. Mixture modeling indicated that color-labeling benefits in visual working memory resulted from an increase of detailed visual memory, whereas long-term memory benefits accrued from categorical representations. Our findings point to dissociations on the role of language in visual working memory and visual long-term memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Cochlear implantation is a well-established method for restoring hearing sensation in individuals with severe to profound hearing loss. It significantly improves verbal communication for many users, despite substantial variability in patients' reports and performance on speech perception tests and quality-of-life outcome measures. Such variability in outcome measures remains several years after implantation and could reflect difficulties in attentional regulation. The current study assessed the ability to use a cue to guide attention internally toward visual or auditory working memory (i.e., reflective attention) in cochlear implant (CI) users. Participants completed a cognitive task called the delayed match-to-sample task in which a visual gradient was presented on a computer screen and a piano tone was presented through speakers simultaneously. A visual cue (i.e., letter A or V) instructed participants to focus attention on the item held in auditory or visual working memory. After a delay following the cue presentation, participants were presented with a probe item and indicated by pressing a button whether it matched the cued item in working memory. CI users and age-matched normal hearing adults showed comparable benefit from having an informative cue relative to an uninformative cue (i.e., letter X). Although CI users have had a history of severe deafness and experience coarse sound information, they were able to retrospectively orient their attention to an item in auditory or visual working memory. These findings suggest that CI users with at least one year of CI experience can successfully regulate attention to a level that is comparable to that of normal hearing individuals.

Most research on visual working memory (WM) focuses on 2D objects and spatial locations; however, the storage mechanism of depth information-another important dimension in a 3D environment-remains largely unknown. The present study conducted seven experiments to systematically investigate how absolute depth (metric distance) and relative depth (ordinal relations among depth planes) are encoded, maintained, and consolidated in WM. In Experiments 1a and 1b, we found that memory accuracy for relative depth was higher than that for absolute depth, and verbal WM seemed to be automatically involved in encoding relative depth in the form of numerals even though memory stimuli were presented visually, and verbal suppression was applied. Experiments 2a and 2b showed memory for fine absolute depth information gradually declined over time, while memory for coarse depth information and relative depth showed no temporal decay. By manipulating the stimuli-mask onset latency, Experiment 3a revealed that memory for absolute depth remained to be fragile across retention, while Experiment 3b showed that relative depth information could be consolidated into robust memory. By inserting an additional visual search task into the memory task, Experiment 4 showed that attention was required for the maintenance of absolute depth information, while relative depth memory involved minimal attention engagement. These findings indicate separate storage mechanisms for the two types of depth information: Absolute depth, especially fine information, is poorly maintained in a fragile visual store, whereas relative depth, which is encoded coarsely, involves both a robust verbal store and a visual store. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

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.

BACKGROUND: Ischemic hypoxia induced by suprathreshold G-force loading can adversely affect vision, cognition, and lead to loss of consciousness (LOC). The purpose of this study was to determine whether reductions in cerebral oxygenation, caused by subthreshold G-forces (up to 4 Gz and of limited durations that do not lead to LOC), would affect visual perception and working memory performance.METHODS: Sixteen subjects performed visual perception and working memory tasks both before and during Gz exposures (1, 2.2, 3, 4 with leg pressurization, 4 with leg and abdomen pressurization) within a human-use centrifuge.RESULTS: As measured using near-infrared spectroscopy, blood oxygenation over medial prefrontal cortex was similar in the 1 and 2.2 Gz conditions, but was reduced to a similar extent in the 3 and 4 Gz conditions. In parallel, visual perception accuracy was reduced in the 3 and 4 Gz conditions, with no difference between the 3 and 4 Gz conditions. No change in reaction time was seen. Conversely, neither accuracy nor reaction time changes were observed for the visual working memory task.DISCUSSION: These results indicate that although visual working memory is not affected, the ability to visually discriminate between stimuli is reduced at G-forces as low as 3 and 4 Gz. This may have important ramifications for pilots who are routinely subjected to such forces.Croft RJ, Klegrd R, Tribukait A, Taylor NAS, Eiken O. Effects of acceleration-induced reductions in retinal and cerebral oxygenation on human performance. Aerosp Med Hum Perform. 2021; 92(2):7582.

Manipulations of attention dissociate fragile visual short-term memory from visual working memory

Despite increasing recognition of the significance of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), the long-term cognitive consequences of the injury remain unclear. More sensitive measures that can detect subtle cognitive changes and consideration of individual variability are needed to properly characterise cognitive outcomes following mTBI. Here, we used complex behavioural tasks, individual differences approaches, and electrophysiology to investigate the long-term cognitive effects of a history of mTBI. In Experiment 1, participants with self-reported mTBI history (n=82) showed poorer verbal working memory performance on the operation span task compared to control participants (n=88), but there were no group differences in visual working memory, multitasking, cognitive flexibility, attentional control, visuospatial ability, or information processing speed. Individual differences analyses revealed that time since injury and presence of memory loss predicted visual working memory capacity and visuospatial ability, respectively, in those with mTBI history. In Experiment 2, participants with mTBI history (n=20) again demonstrated poorer verbal working memory on the operation span task compared to control participants (n=38), but no group differences were revealed on a visuospatial complex span task or simpler visual working memory measures. We also explored the electrophysiological indices of visual working memory using EEG during a change detection task. No differences were observed in early sensory event-related potentials (P1, N1) or the later negative slow wave associated with visual working memory capacity. Together, these findings suggest that mTBI history may be associated with a lasting, isolated disruption in the subsystem underlying verbal working memory storage. The results emphasise the importance of sensitive cognitive measures and accounting for individual variability in injury characteristics when assessing mTBI outcomes.

Visual working memory (VWM) is a cognitive system, which temporarily stores task-relevant visual information to enable interactions with the environment. In everyday VWM use, we typically decide how long we look to encode information, and how long we wait before acting on the memory. In contrast, VWM is typically studied in unnaturally rigid paradigms that keep presentation times and delays fixed. Here, we ask how visual memories build up over self-paced viewing times, and how they decay over self-paced delays, in a task that naturally engages VWM. We employed a copying task in which participants were tasked to recreate an “example” arrangement of items in an adjacent empty “workspace”. We tracked their unconstrained viewing and copying behavior at the level of individual items’ viewing times and the time to successful placements (i.e., delay). Our results show that performance monotonically increased for viewing times up to 1 s (per item), and plateaued afterwards. Interestingly, while views exceeding 1 s did not strongly improve performance for short (2-s) delays, views beyond 1-s did improve performance for longer delays. In contrast, this pattern was not observed in Experiments 2A and 2B, where viewing and delay times were experimentally manipulated (i.e., in more typical, rigid paradigms). These findings showcase the importance of considering aspects of naturalistic behavior, like decision-making, when studying VWM. We suggest that in everyday situations, short glances are sufficient for immediate use from VWM, but long views are required for effective delayed use.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13421-025-01718-9.

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.

SUMMARYNeuronal oscillations are suggested to play an important role in auditory working memory (WM), but their contribution to content-specific representations has remained unclear. Here, we measure magnetoencephalography during a retro-cueing task with parametric ripple-sound stimuli, which are spectrotemporally similar to speech but resist non-auditory memory strategies. Using machine learning analyses, with rigorous between-subject cross-validation and non-parametric permutation testing, we show that memorized sound content is strongly represented in phase-synchronization patterns between subregions of auditory and frontoparietal cortices. These phase-synchronization patterns predict the memorized sound content steadily across the studied maintenance period. In addition to connectivity-based representations, there are indices of more local, “activity silent” representations in auditory cortices, where the decoding accuracy of WM content significantly increases after task-irrelevant “impulse stimuli.” Our results demonstrate that synchronization patterns across auditory sensory and association areas orchestrate neuronal coding of auditory WM content. This connectivity-based coding scheme could also extend beyond the auditory domain.

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

Magnetic stimulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex dissociates fragile visual short-term memory from visual working memory

In four experiments we assessed whether visual working memory (VWM) maintains a record of previously processed visual information, allowing old information to be inhibited, and new information to be prioritized. Specifically, we evaluated whether VWM contributes to the inhibition (i.e., visual marking) of previewed distractors in a preview search. We evaluated this proposal by testing three predictions. First, Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrate that preview inhibition is more effective when the number of previewed distractors is below VWM capacity than above; an effect that can only be observed at small preview set sizes (Experiment 2A) and when observers are allowed to move their eyes freely (Experiment 2B). Second, Experiment 3 shows that, when quantified as the number of inhibited distractors, the magnitude of the preview effect is stable across different search difficulties. Third, Experiment 4 demonstrates that individual differences in preview inhibition are correlated with individual differences in VWM capacity. These findings provide converging evidence that VWM supports the inhibition of previewed distractors. More generally, these findings demonstrate how VWM contributes to the efficiency of human visual information processing--VWM prioritizes new information by inhibiting old information from being reselected for attention.

Auditory and Visual Working Memory Functioning in College Students with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and/or Learning Disabilities.

The contents of visual working memory delay the perceived offset of matching visual stimuli