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bioRxiv · 10.1101/093815

A theory of working memory without consciousness or sustained activity

Trubutschek, D.·Marti, S.·Ojeda, A.·King, J.-R.·Mi, Y.·Tsodyks, M.·Dehaene, S.
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Abstract

Working memory and conscious perception are thought to share similar brain mechanisms, yet recent reports of non-conscious working memory challenge this view. Combining visual masking with magnetoencephalography, we demonstrate the reality of non-conscious working memory and dissect its neural mechanisms. In a spatial delayed-response task, participants reported the location of a subjectively unseen target above chance-level after a long delay. Conscious perception and conscious working memory were characterized by similar signatures: a sustained desynchronization in the alpha/beta band over frontal cortex, and a decodable representation of target location in posterior sensors. During non-conscious working memory, such activity vanished. Our findings contradict models that identify working memory with sustained neural firing, but are compatible with recent proposals of activity-silent working memory. We present a theoretical framework and simulations showing how slowly decaying synaptic changes allow cell assemblies to go dormant during the delay, yet be retrieved above chance-level after several seconds.

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Trubutschek, D., Marti, S., Ojeda, A., King, J.-R., Mi, Y., Tsodyks, M., Dehaene, S.. 2016-12-14. A theory of working memory without consciousness or sustained activity. https://doi.org/10.1101/093815

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