Brain-wide single-neuron bases of working memory for sounds in humans

Joel I Berger; Alexander J Billig; Phillip E Gander; Christopher K Kovach; Ariane E Rhone; Ryan M Calmus; Christopher M Garcia; Sukhbinder Kumar; Hiroto Kawasaki; Matthew A Howard; Timothy D Griffiths

doi:10.1101/2025.11.10.687666

Back

Brain-wide single-neuron bases of working memory for sounds in humans

Preprint

Open access

Brain-wide single-neuron bases of working memory for sounds in humans

Joel I Berger, Alexander J Billig, Phillip E Gander, Christopher K Kovach, Ariane E Rhone, Ryan M Calmus, Christopher M Garcia, Sukhbinder Kumar, Hiroto Kawasaki, Matthew A Howard, …

bioRxiv

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

11/10/2025

DOI: 10.1101/2025.11.10.687666

PMCID: PMC12642642

PMID: 41292966

Files and links (1)

url

https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.11.10.687666View

Preprint (Author's original)This preprint has not been evaluated by subject experts through peer review. Preprints may undergo extensive changes and/or become peer-reviewed journal articles. Open Access

Abstract

In order to understand the constantly changing acoustic world our brains must maintain elements of auditory scenes in memory. The neural mechanisms for this fundamental process remain unclear. Here, we report human intracranial recordings of 1269 single neurons, recorded from various brain structures while participants performed a non-verbal auditory working memory task that required adjusting a tone frequency to match a target. We found neurons within regions including hippocampus, insula and cingulate cortex, for which firing rates were modulated at various phases of the task, particularly throughout maintenance and during active tone adjustment. For the majority of the neurons modulated during maintenance, relative to baseline, there was a striking suppression of activity rather than increased activity, though response types were heterogeneous both within and between regions. Across the entire neuronal population, state-space analyses demonstrated that the different task phases were clearly separable. Behaviorally, there was an increased number of neurons were modulated at the beginning of the maintenance phase when participants performed better. These data support the existence of a distributed neural code for auditory working memory that determines related behavior.

Details

Title: Subtitle: Brain-wide single-neuron bases of working memory for sounds in humans
Creators: Joel I Berger - University of Iowa
Alexander J Billig - University College London
Phillip E Gander - University of Iowa
Christopher K Kovach - University of Iowa
Ariane E Rhone - University of Iowa
Ryan M Calmus - University of Iowa
Christopher M Garcia
Sukhbinder Kumar - University of Iowa
Hiroto Kawasaki - University of Iowa
Matthew A Howard - University of Iowa
Timothy D Griffiths - Newcastle University
Resource Type: Preprint
Publication Details: bioRxiv
DOI: 10.1101/2025.11.10.687666
PMID: 41292966
PMCID: PMC12642642
NLM abbreviation: bioRxiv
ISSN: 2692-8205
eISSN: 2692-8205
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; United States
Language: English
Date posted: 11/10/2025
Academic Unit: Neurology; Radiology; Iowa Neuroscience Institute; Neurosurgery; Otolaryngology; Health, Sport, and Human Physiology
Record Identifier: 9985034937502771

Metrics

20 Record Views