Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics (Ministry of Education and Shanghai), Key Laboratory of Adolescent Health Assessment and Exercise Intervention of Ministry of Education, and School of Life Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.
Elife. 2021 Apr 29;10:e64457. doi: 10.7554/eLife.64457.
Working memory (WM), the ability to actively hold information in memory over a delay period of seconds, is a fundamental constituent of cognition. Delay-period activity in sensory cortices has been observed in WM tasks, but whether and when the activity plays a functional role for memory maintenance remains unclear. Here, we investigated the causal role of auditory cortex (AC) for memory maintenance in mice performing an auditory WM task. Electrophysiological recordings revealed that AC neurons were active not only during the presentation of the auditory stimulus but also early in the delay period. Furthermore, optogenetic suppression of neural activity in AC during the stimulus epoch and early delay period impaired WM performance, whereas suppression later in the delay period did not. Thus, AC is essential for information encoding and maintenance in auditory WM task, especially during the early delay period.
工作记忆（WM）是一种在几秒钟的延迟期间主动保持信息的能力，是认知的基本组成部分。在 WM 任务中观察到感觉皮层中的延迟期活动，但该活动是否以及何时对记忆维持起着功能作用尚不清楚。在这里，我们研究了在执行听觉 WM 任务的小鼠中听觉皮层（AC）对记忆维持的因果作用。电生理记录显示，AC 神经元不仅在听觉刺激呈现期间活跃，而且在延迟期早期也活跃。此外，在刺激期间和早期延迟期用光遗传学抑制 AC 中的神经元活动会损害 WM 表现，而在延迟期后期抑制则不会。因此，AC 对于听觉 WM 任务中的信息编码和维持至关重要，尤其是在早期的延迟期。
