The fate of deprived sensory cortices (visual regions in the blind and auditory regions in the deaf) exemplifies the extent to which experience can change brain regions. These regions are frequently seen to activate during tasks involving other sensory modalities, leading many authors to infer that these regions have started to process sensory information of other modalities. However, such observations can also imply that these regions are now activating in response to any task event, regardless of the sensory modality.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhy do we divide ('chunk') long tasks into a series of shorter subtasks? A popular view is that limits in working memory (WM) prevent us from simultaneously maintaining all task relevant information in mind. We therefore chunk the task into smaller units so that we only maintain information in WM that is relevant to the current unit. In contrast to this view, we show that long tasks that are not constrained by WM limits are nonetheless chunked into smaller units.
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