Labaronne Maximilien, Caclin Anne, Plancher Gaën
Université Lumière Lyon 2, Laboratoire d'Etude des Mécanismes Cognitifs, Bron, France.
Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS, INSERM, Centre de Recherche en Neurosciences de Lyon CRNL U1028 UMR5292, Bron, France.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2025 Mar 1;37(3):657-679. doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_02267.
Despite the growing interest in the study of attentional refreshing, the functioning of this working memory maintenance mechanism, including its cerebral underpinnings, is still debated. In particular, it remains unclear whether refreshing promotes long-term memory and whether it, in return, depends on long-term memory content to operate. Here, we used direct maintenance instructions and measured brain activity to investigate working memory maintenance with two objectives: (1) test if different behavioral and oscillatory patterns could be observed when participants were instructed to use attentional refreshing versus verbal rehearsal, and (2) observe whether and how refreshing is modulated when maintaining novel (pseudowords) versus familiar (words) memoranda. We conducted an EEG experiment using a modified Brown-Peterson task, in which we manipulated the type of maintenance engaged through explicit instructions (verbal rehearsal vs. refreshing), the type of memoranda (words vs. pseudowords), and the memory load (2 vs. 6). Using scalp EEG, we measured both neural oscillations during working memory maintenance and ERPs during the concurrent parity judgment task. For words, we showed that verbal rehearsal benefited more short-term recall whereas refreshing benefited more delayed recall. In keeping with these behavioral differences between maintenance instructions, frontal-midline theta power increased with memory load only when using verbal rehearsal, whereas occipito-parietal alpha desynchronization was larger with refreshing than verbal rehearsal. When maintaining pseudowords, verbal rehearsal also benefitted short-term recall more than refreshing. However, no long-term memory benefit of refreshing was observed for pseudowords, and oscillatory activity was not different under the two maintenance instructions. Our results provide new evidence supporting the independence between attentional refreshing and verbal rehearsal, and bring new insight into refreshing functioning. We discuss the possible interpretations of these results and the implications for the attentional refreshing literature.
尽管对注意力刷新的研究兴趣日益浓厚，但这种工作记忆维持机制的功能，包括其大脑基础，仍存在争议。特别是，目前尚不清楚刷新是否能促进长期记忆，以及它反过来是否依赖于长期记忆内容来运作。在这里，我们使用直接的维持指令并测量大脑活动，以研究工作记忆维持，目标有两个：（1）测试当参与者被指示使用注意力刷新与言语复述时，是否能观察到不同的行为和振荡模式；（2）观察在维持新颖（假词）与熟悉（单词）记忆时，刷新是如何被调节的。我们进行了一项脑电图实验，使用了改良的布朗-彼得森任务，在该任务中，我们通过明确的指令（言语复述与刷新）、记忆类型（单词与假词）和记忆负荷（2与6）来操纵所采用的维持类型。使用头皮脑电图，我们测量了工作记忆维持期间的神经振荡以及并发奇偶判断任务期间的事件相关电位。对于单词，我们发现言语复述对短期回忆更有益，而刷新对延迟回忆更有益。与维持指令之间的这些行为差异一致，仅在使用言语复述时，额中线θ波功率随记忆负荷增加，而枕顶α波去同步化在刷新时比言语复述时更大。在维持假词时，言语复述对短期回忆的益处也大于刷新。然而，对于假词，未观察到刷新对长期记忆的益处，并且在两种维持指令下振荡活动没有差异。我们的结果提供了新的证据，支持注意力刷新与言语复述之间的独立性，并为刷新功能带来了新的见解。我们讨论了这些结果的可能解释以及对注意力刷新文献的影响。
