Institute for Brain and Behavior Amsterdam, Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1081 BT, The Netherlands
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX2 6GG, United Kingdom.
J Neurosci. 2023 Dec 6;43(49):8515-8524. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0709-23.2023.
For visual working memory to serve upcoming behavior, it is crucial that we prepare for the potential use of working-memory contents ahead of time. Recent studies have demonstrated how the prospection and planning for an upcoming manual action starts early after visual encoding, and occurs alongside visual retention. Here, we address whether such "output planning" in visual working memory flexibly adapts to different visual-motor mappings, and occurs even when an upcoming action will only potentially become relevant for behavior. Human participants (female and male) performed a visual-motor working memory task in which they remembered one or two colored oriented bars for later (potential) use. We linked, and counterbalanced, the tilt of the visual items to specific manual responses. This allowed us to track planning of upcoming behavior through contralateral attenuation of β band activity, a canonical motor-cortical EEG signature of manual-action planning. The results revealed how action encoding and subsequent planning alongside visual working memory (1) reflect anticipated task demands rather than specific visual-motor mappings, (2) occur even for actions that will only potentially become relevant for behavior, and (3) are associated with faster performance for the encoded item, at the expense of performance to other working-memory content. This reveals how the potential prospective use of visual working memory content is flexibly planned early on, with consequences for the speed of memory-guided behavior. It is increasingly studied how visual working memory helps us to prepare for the future, in addition to how it helps us to hold onto the past. Recent studies have demonstrated that the planning of prospective actions occurs alongside encoding and retention in working memory. We show that such early "output planning" flexibly adapts to varying visual-motor mappings, occurs both for certain and potential actions, and predicts ensuing working-memory guided behavior. These results highlight the flexible and future-oriented nature of visual working memory, and provide insight into the neural basis of the anticipatory dynamics that translate visual representations into adaptive upcoming behavior.
为了让视觉工作记忆服务于未来的行为，我们必须提前为潜在的工作记忆内容的使用做好准备。最近的研究表明，在视觉编码之后，对即将到来的手动动作的展望和计划很早就开始了，并且与视觉保留同时发生。在这里，我们探讨了视觉工作记忆中的这种“输出计划”是否可以灵活地适应不同的视觉-运动映射，即使即将到来的动作仅可能与行为相关。人类参与者（女性和男性）执行了一项视觉-运动工作记忆任务，他们记住了一个或两个彩色定向条，以备将来（潜在）使用。我们链接并平衡了视觉项目的倾斜度与特定的手动响应。这使我们能够通过β波段活动的对侧衰减来跟踪即将到来的行为计划，β波段活动是手动动作计划的典型运动皮层 EEG 特征。结果表明，动作编码以及随后与视觉工作记忆一起进行的计划（1）反映了预期的任务需求，而不是特定的视觉-运动映射，（2）即使对于仅可能与行为相关的动作也会发生，（3）与编码项目的更快性能相关，而牺牲了对其他工作记忆内容的性能。这揭示了如何灵活地提前计划潜在的视觉工作记忆内容的使用，从而对记忆引导行为的速度产生影响。越来越多的研究表明，视觉工作记忆不仅有助于我们记住过去，还有助于我们为未来做准备。最近的研究表明，前瞻性动作的计划发生在工作记忆的编码和保留过程中。我们表明，这种早期的“输出计划”可以灵活地适应不同的视觉-运动映射，对于确定的和潜在的动作都会发生，并且可以预测随后的工作记忆引导行为。这些结果强调了视觉工作记忆的灵活性和面向未来的性质，并提供了对将视觉表示转化为适应性未来行为的预期动态的神经基础的深入了解。
