[Working Memory and Controlled Attention].

Short-term memory is crucial for higher cognitive functions, yet its storage capacity is severely limited. Thus, it is necessary to selectively retain information relevant to our goals by controlling attention. This is facilitated by working memory, which consists of short-term storage and executive attention.

Working Memory Content Is Distorted by Its Use in Perceptual Comparisons.

Visual information around us is rarely static. To perform a task in such a dynamic environment, we often have to compare current visual input with our working memory (WM) representation of the immediate past. However, little is known about what happens to a WM representation when it is compared with perceptual input.

Development of visual working memory and distractor resistance in relation to academic performance.

Visual working memory (VWM) enables active maintenance of goal-relevant visual information in a readily accessible state. The storage capacity of VWM is severely limited, often as few as 3 simple items. Thus, it is crucial to restrict distractor information from consuming VWM capacity.

Larger right posterior parietal volume in action video game experts: a behavioral and voxel-based morphometry (VBM) study.

Recent studies suggest that action video game players exhibit superior performance in visuospatial cognitive tasks compared with non-game players. However, the neural basis underlying this visuospatial cognitive performance advantage remains largely unknown. The present human behavioral and imaging study compared gray matter volume in action video game experts and non-experts using structural magnetic resonance imaging and voxel-based morphometry analysis.

Neural limits to representing objects still within view.

Visual working memory is an online workspace for temporarily representing visual information from the environment. The two most prevalent empirical characteristics of working memory are that it is supported by sustained neural activity over a delay period and it has a severely limited capacity for representing multiple items simultaneously. Traditionally, such delay activity and capacity limits have been considered to be exclusive for maintaining information about objects that are no longer visible to the observers.

[Temporal limitations of visual attention for order perception].

The relative order of a letter sequence is difficult to recognize when it is presented repeatedly than when it is presented only once in a rapid serial visual presentation (Holcombe, Kanwisher, & Triesman, 2001). In the present study, we investigated a critical factor that causes this order deficit. Experiment 1 demonstrated that repeating a letter sequence in a short time period induced the order deficit.

Primary visual cortex scales individual's perceived brightness with power function: inner psychophysics with fMRI.

Perceived brightness is well described by Stevens' power function (S. S. Stevens, 1957, On the psychophysical law, Psychological Review, Vol.

Dissociable neural activations of conscious visibility and attention.

Recent neuroimaging evidence indicates that visual consciousness of objects is reflected by the activation in the lateral occipital cortex as well as in the frontal and parietal cortex. However, most previous studies used behavioral paradigms in which attention raised or enhanced visual consciousness (visibility or recognition performance). This co-occurrence made it difficult to reveal whether an observed cortical activation is related to visual consciousness or attention.

Connectivity and signal intensity in the parieto-occipital cortex predicts top-down attentional effect in visual masking: an fMRI study based on individual differences.

Top-down attention affects even the early stages of visual processing. For example, several studies have reported that instructions prior to the presentation of visual stimuli can both enhance and reduce visual masking. The finding that top-down processing influences perceptual processing is called the attentional effect.

Involvement of V5/MT+ in object substitution masking: evidence from repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation.

The visibility of a briefly presented target can be reduced by a subsequent weak mask that does not touch it, when the target is encoded in low spatiotemporal resolution. This phenomenon, called object substitution masking, has recently been proposed to reflect information updating in object-level representation, with perception of the target and the mask belonging to a single object through apparent motion. We investigated this issue by applying repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation over V5/MT+, specialized in visual motion processing.