Flexibility, The Remarkable Thing Of Working Memory, From Random Connections

Working memory is your capability for holding things 'in mind.' This works as a workspace in which information can be stored, manipulated, and then utilized for guiding behavior. In this manner, it plays a significant role in cognition, decoupling behavior from the immediate sensory world. One of the remarkable things regards to working memory is its flexibility -- you can hold anything in mind.

How this flexibility is gained has not been understood. In their new manuscript, Bouchacourt and Buschman show a new model of working memory which captures this flexibility.

The model joins a high-dimensional random network with structured sensory networks to flexibly maintain any input. The untuned nature of the connections makes it possible for the network to maintain any arbitrary input.

However, this flexibility comes at a particular cost: the random connections overlap, leading to interference in between representations and limiting the memory capacity of the network. This matches the limited ability of working memory in humans and suggests there is a tradeoff between flexibility and capacity in working memory.

Moreover, the model captures various other behavioral and neurophysiological characteristics of working memory.

This work offers new insight into a core cognitive function in humans. Ongoing work hopes to understand how these mechanisms may be disrupted in neuropsychiatric diseases that disrupt working memory.

Working memory is a cognitive system with a confined capacity which is responsible for temporarily holding information available for processing. Working memory is significant for reasoning and the guidance of decision-making and behavior. Working memory is often utilized synonymously with short-term memory, but some theorists consider the two forms of memory distinct, pre-assuming that working memory permits for the manipulation of stored information, while short-term memory only recommends to the short-term storage of information. Working memory is a theoretical concept central to cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and neuroscience.

Miller, Galanter, and Pribram coined the term "working memory". It was used in the 1960s in the context of theories which likened the mind to a computer. In 1968, Atkinson and Shiffrin utilized the term for describing their "short-term store". What we today call working memory was formerly showed to variously as a "short-term store" or short-term memory, primary memory, immediate memory, operant memory, and provisional memory. Short-term memory is the capability for remembering information over a brief period (in the order of seconds). Most of the theorists today use the concept of working memory to replace or include the older concept of short-term memory, marking a stronger emphasis on the notion of manipulating information rather than mere maintenance.

By: Preeti Narula

Content: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190516135610.htm