Distinct spatial patterns of brain activity associated with memory storage and search.

The time it takes for a human participant to decide whether a given stimulus is an element of a remembered set increases approximately linearly with the number of elements in the set. Here we tested for and detected a spatial pattern of brain activity whose magnitude of expression during this memory search process correlates with set size. We then tested the idea that memory search simply involves a re-activation of neurons involved in remembering the set by statistically comparing the patterns of brain activity corresponding to memory search and set size dependent working memory maintenance.

Age-related changes in brain activation during a delayed item recognition task.

To test competing models of age-related changes in brain functioning (capacity limitation, neural efficiency, compensatory reorganization, and dedifferentiation), young (n=40; mean age=25.1 years) and elderly (n=18; mean age=74.4 years) subjects performed a delayed item recognition task for visually presented letters with three set sizes (1, 3, or 6 letters) while being scanned with BOLD fMRI.

Positive evidence against human hippocampal involvement in working memory maintenance of familiar stimuli.

Subjects (n = 40) performed a delayed item recognition task for visually presented letters with three set sizes (1, 3 or 6 letters). Accuracy was close to ceiling at all set sizes, so we took set size as a proxy for WM load (i.e.