Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Behavioural relevance modulates access to spatial working memory in humans.

C J Ploner1, F Ostendorf, S A Brandt

  • 1Klinik für Neurologie, Charité, Schumannstr. 20/21, D-10117 Berlin, Germany. christoph.ploner@charite.de

The European Journal of Neuroscience
|February 13, 2001
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Distinct Physiological Mechanisms Drive Grey Matter Plasticity in Complex Versus Simple Sequence Learning.

Human brain mapping·2026
Same author

Health literacy, nutrition, complementary medicine and their associations with life satisfaction in cancer patients: a cross-sectional study.

BMC cancer·2026
Same author

Depressive and anxiety symptoms in individuals with Long-COVID: Does social network matter? - Results of a German Long-COVID study.

Journal of affective disorders·2026
Same author

Flexible microfluidics-integrated electrochemical system for detection of tumor necrosis factor-alpha under continuous flow of sweat.

Biosensors & bioelectronics·2025
Same author

Retinal nerve fibre layer thickness reflects characteristics of brain grey and white matter.

bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology·2025
Same author

Excitability Modulations of Somatosensory Perception Do Not Depend on Feedforward Neuronal Population Spikes.

The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience·2025

Behavioral relevance significantly impacts human spatial working memory. When information is behaviorally relevant, it is selectively accessed, unlike in irrelevant conditions, demonstrating its crucial role.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Experimental Psychology

Background:

  • Neurophysiological studies in monkeys indicate that working memory selectively represents behaviorally relevant information.
  • Previous research lacked behavioral evidence in humans to support this selective representation in working memory.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the role of behavioral relevance in accessing human visuospatial working memory.
  • To provide behavioral evidence for selective information processing in human working memory.

Main Methods:

  • Delayed oculomotor response tasks were employed with two successive visual cues.
  • Subjects performed memory-guided saccades under 'relevant' and 'irrelevant' conditions, cued by auditory signals.
  • Interference effects on saccade accuracy were analyzed based on cue locations and behavioral relevance.

Related Experiment Videos

Main Results:

  • A significant increase in memory-guided saccade errors occurred in the 'relevant' condition when the second cue interfered spatially with the first.
  • This spatially selective interference effect was absent in the 'irrelevant' condition, despite identical stimuli.
  • Behavioral data demonstrate that only behaviorally relevant information is selectively accessed in human spatial working memory.

Conclusions:

  • Behavioral relevance is crucial for accessing human spatial working memory.
  • These findings align with monkey neurophysiological studies, supporting the selective neural representation of relevant information in working memory.