Department of Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier University Waterloo, ON, Canada.
Front Comput Neurosci. 2014 Mar 5;8:23. doi: 10.3389/fncom.2014.00023. eCollection 2014.
In a previous study, Harris et al. (2002) found disruption of vibrotactile short-term memory after applying single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to primary somatosensory cortex (SI) early in the maintenance period, and suggested that this demonstrated a role for SI in vibrotactile memory storage. While such a role is compatible with recent suggestions that sensory cortex is the storage substrate for working memory, it stands in contrast to a relatively large body of evidence from human EEG and single-cell recording in primates that instead points to prefrontal cortex as the storage substrate for vibrotactile memory. In the present study, we use computational methods to demonstrate how Harris et al.'s results can be reproduced by TMS-induced activity in sensory cortex and subsequent feedforward interference with memory traces stored in prefrontal cortex, thereby reconciling discordant findings in the tactile memory literature.
在之前的一项研究中，哈里斯等人（2002 年）发现，在维持期早期，对初级体感皮层（SI）施加单次脉冲经颅磁刺激（TMS）后，振动触觉短期记忆受到干扰，这表明 SI 在振动触觉记忆存储中起作用。虽然这种作用与最近的观点一致，即感觉皮层是工作记忆的存储基质，但与来自人类脑电图和灵长类动物单细胞记录的大量证据形成对比，这些证据表明，振动触觉记忆的存储基质是前额叶皮层。在本研究中，我们使用计算方法证明了哈里斯等人的结果如何可以通过 TMS 诱导的感觉皮层活动以及随后对存储在前额叶皮层中的记忆痕迹的前馈干扰来再现，从而调和触觉记忆文献中的不一致发现。
