Working Memory

the ability to actively hold information in the mind needed to do complex tasks such as reasoning, comprehension and learning; tasks that require use goal-oriented manipulation of information or behaviors in the face of interfering processes and distractions

symbolic codes for information stored either transiently or permanently in neuronal networks

processes or computations performed on representations

Contains two storage buffers: phonological loop (acoustic rehearsal code) and visuospatial sketchpad; as well as a central executive

coordinates the two storage buffers, is responsible for attentional control, has no storage capacity, and is the interface with long term memory (LTM)

the intermediate principle sulcus (sometimes)

maintained information about what happened

maintained information about a planned action

TMS over parietal lobe resulted resulted in impairment during the BEGINNING of the delay; TMS over prefrontal lobe resulted in impairment during the MIDDLE of the delay; therefore the parietal attends to representation during the delay and prefrontal maintains representation and converts it to stored information

mainly FEF and PPC (also DLPFC)

mainly Brocca's area and INFERIOR posterior parietal cortex; also kind of DLPFC

showed that processing of spatial and verbal information could be distinguished; had a higher working memory span for visually presented letters than auditorily presented letters

memory for auditory-verbal and visual-verbal material is equally impaired by irrelevant auditory phonological input (ex: trying to remember a phone # and someone talks to you interferes); inference = verbal short term storage relies on phonological, rather than semantic, representations

verbal working memory is disrupted by overt or covert articulation of irrelevant phonological code but not by finger tapping; inference = rehearsal is required to maintain phonological codes

the longer a word is the harder it is to remember; inference = rehearsal uses speech motor (articulatory) programs in real time

harder to remember words that sound alike compared to those that sound differently; inference = maintained representations are in a phonological code

Brocca's area (left frontal) is rehearsal and activity and spikes in the beginning then decreases as the left inferior posterior parietal activity increases, as it stores the rehearsed information (kind of shows opposite of effect of spatial working memory)