Journal article
A Neural Mechanism for Surprise-related Interruptions of Visuospatial Working Memory
Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. 1991), Vol.28(1), pp.199-212
01/01/2018
DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhw367
PMID: 27909006
Abstract
Abstract
Surprising perceptual events recruit a fronto-basal ganglia mechanism for inhibition, which suppresses motor activity following surprise. A recent study found that this inhibitory mechanism also disrupts the maintenance of verbal working memory (WM) after surprising tones. However, it is unclear whether this same mechanism also relates to surprise-related interruptions of non-verbal WM. We tested this hypothesis using a change-detection task, in which surprising tones impaired visuospatial WM. Participants also performed a stop-signal task (SST). We used independent component analysis and single-trial scalp-electroencephalogram to test whether the same inhibitory mechanism that reflects motor inhibition in the SST relates to surprise-related visuospatial WM decrements, as was the case for verbal WM. As expected, surprising tones elicited activity of the inhibitory mechanism, and this activity correlated strongly with the trial-by-trial level of surprise. However, unlike for verbal WM, the activity of this mechanism was unrelated to visuospatial WM accuracy. Instead, inhibition-independent activity that immediately succeeded the inhibitory mechanism was increased when visuospatial WM was disrupted. This shows that surprise-related interruptions of visuospatial WM are not effected by the same inhibitory mechanism that interrupts verbal WM, and instead provides evidence for a 2-stage model of distraction.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- A Neural Mechanism for Surprise-related Interruptions of Visuospatial Working Memory
- Creators
- Jan R Wessel - Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA52242, USA
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. 1991), Vol.28(1), pp.199-212
- DOI
- 10.1093/cercor/bhw367
- PMID
- 27909006
- NLM abbreviation
- Cereb Cortex
- ISSN
- 1047-3211
- eISSN
- 1460-2199
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 01/01/2018
- Academic Unit
- Roy J. Carver Department of Biomedical Engineering; Neurology; Psychological and Brain Sciences; Iowa Neuroscience Institute
- Record Identifier
- 9984002474902771
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