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Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

Monthly
160 pp. per issue
8 1/2 x 11, illustrated
Founded: 1989
ISSN 0898-929X
E-ISSN 1530-8898
2008 ISI Impact Factor: 4.867

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

August 15, 2001, Vol. 13, No. 6, Pages 766-785
Posted Online March 13, 2006.
(doi:10.1162/08989290152541430)
© 2001 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
A Cortical Mechanism for Binding in Visual Working Memory

Antonino Raffone

La Sapienza University of Rome

Gezinus Wolters

Leiden University, The Netherlands

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Luck and Vogel (1997) showed that the storage capacity of visual working memory is about four objects and that this capacity does not depend on the number of features making up the objects. Thus, visual working memory seems to process integrated objects rather than individual features, just as verbal working memory handles higher-order “chunks” instead of individual features or letters. In this article, we present a model based on synchronization and desynchronization of reverberatory neural assemblies, which can parsimoniously account for both the limited capacity of visual working memory, and for the temporary binding of multiple assemblies into a single pattern. A critical capacity of about three to four independent patterns showed up in our simulations, consistent with the results of Luck and Vogel. The same desynchronizing mechanism optimizing phase segregation between assemblies coding for separate features or multifeature objects poses a limit to the number of oscillatory reverberations. We show how retention of multiple features as visual chunks (feature conjunctions or objects) in terms of synchronized reverberatory assemblies may be achieved with and without long-term memory guidance.

Cited by

Ransom K. Winder, James A. Reggia, Scott A. Weems, Michael F. Bunting. (2009) An Oscillatory Hebbian Network Model of Short-Term Memory. Neural Computation 21:3, 741-761
Online publication date: 1-Mar-2009.
Abstract | Full Text | PDF (1251 KB) | PDF Plus (244 KB) 
F. Gregory Ashby, Shawn W. Ell, Vivian V. Valentin, Michael B. Casale. (2005) FROST: A Distributed Neurocomputational Model of Working Memory Maintenance. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 17:11, 1728-1743
Online publication date: 1-Nov-2005.
Abstract | PDF (1365 KB) | PDF Plus (430 KB) 
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