The Role of Networks in the Brain in the Control of Remembering and Forgetting Working Memory Items

Abstract

Working memory items can be quickly stored, updated, and removed. In the current study, we aimed to identify what neural mechanisms are involved in the executive memory control of keeping an item in working memory or removing it. Additionally, we aimed to determine if a potential distinction between remembering and removing is consistent across different sensory modalities, that is across visual and auditory information. We reanalysed the data of a retrocue task and used multivariate pattern analyses to identify the patterns of neural activity that realise the remembering and removal of working memory items. We did so by training on both visual and auditory sensory modalities and decoding the timing of the cue (early or late). The timing of the cue reflected the instruction to remove an item from working memory or keep remembering it. We found that several networks play a role in controlling the remembering and removal of working memory items during the delay period of the retro-cue task. These networks include the dorsal and ventral frontoparietal attention networks as well as the default mode network. Importantly, these findings could not be explained by the modality of both the cue and the sample stimuli. Results suggest that the control over the decision to keep an item in working memory or remove it may not be localized to specific areas in the human brain. Instead, the cognitive process of updating the items that are in working memory might be so big that it is distributed throughout numerous cortical areas.