Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Eur J Neurosci. 2018 Oct;48(7):2509-2515. doi: 10.1111/ejn.13759. Epub 2017 Nov 22.
Alpha oscillations are often reported to be amplified during working memory (WM) retention, serving to disengage sensory areas to protect internal representations from external interference. At the same time, contemporary views of WM postulate that sensory areas may often also be recruited for retention. I here review recent evidence that during such 'perceptual' WM, alpha oscillations in mnemonically relevant sensory areas are not amplified but attenuated instead. I will argue that such attenuated alpha states serve a mnemonic role and, further, that larger attenuation may support item-specific attentional prioritisation within perceptual WM. In critically evaluating this role, I also consider (and argue against) four alternatives to a strictly mnemonic account of the available data that may also prove useful to consider in future research. Finally, I highlight key implications of these data for the study of WM and for our understanding of the functional roles of states of attenuated alpha oscillations in cognition.
阿尔法振荡通常在工作记忆 (WM) 保留期间被放大，以隔离感觉区域，防止内部表示受到外部干扰。与此同时，WM 的当代观点假设感觉区域也经常被招募用于保留。我在这里回顾了最近的证据，即在这种“感知”WM 中，与记忆相关的感觉区域中的阿尔法振荡没有被放大，而是被削弱了。我将认为，这种衰减的阿尔法状态具有记忆功能，并且，进一步地，更大的衰减可能支持感知 WM 内特定于项目的注意力优先化。在批判性地评估这个角色时，我还考虑了（并反对）对可用数据的严格记忆解释的四种替代方案，这些替代方案在未来的研究中可能也被证明是有用的。最后，我强调了这些数据对 WM 研究以及对认知中衰减的阿尔法振荡状态的功能角色的理解的关键意义。
