Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Vision

Vision

Vision is the result of light being detected and transduced into neural signals by the retina of the eye. This information is then further analyzed and interpreted by the brain. First, light enters the front of the eye and is focused by the cornea and lens onto the retina—a thin sheet of neural tissue lining the back of the eye. Because of refraction through the convex lens of the eye, images are projected onto the retina upside-down and reversed.

Visual System

Visual System

Light enters the eye through the cornea, a transparent, dome-shaped surface covering the surface of the eyeball that helps to direct and focus incoming light. This light is then channeled toward the pupil, an adjustable opening whose size is controlled by the iris. The iris, a pigmented muscle, regulates the amount of light entering the eye by contracting or dilating the pupil, thereby ensuring optimal light levels for clear vision.
Once through the pupil, the light passes through the lens, a...

Motor and Sensory Areas of the Cortex

Motor and Sensory Areas of the Cortex

The cerebral cortex, the brain's outermost layer, is pivotal in processing complex cognitive tasks, emotions, and various sensory inputs and executing voluntary motor activities. This intricate structure is divided into three primary functional areas: the motor areas, sensory areas, and association areas.
Motor Areas
The motor areas located in the frontal lobe are central to controlling voluntary movements. This region is further subdivided into the primary motor cortex and the premotor cortex.

You might also read

Related Articles

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

Sort by

Same author

Modulating corticospinal excitability with transcranial ultrasound stimulation: meta-analytic evidence of online and offline effects.

Clinical neurophysiology : official journal of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology·2026

Same author

Selective removal of visual working memory items at test.

Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)·2026

Same author

Selective removal of visual working memory items at test.

bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology·2026

Same author

Contralateral delay activity as a marker of visual working memory capacity: A multi-site registered replication.

Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior·2026

Same author

A unique neural signature of long-term memory encoding from EEG inter-electrode correlation.

Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.)·2026

Same author

Past and present goals are represented concurrently during visual search.

PLoS biology·2026

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 26, 2026

Stimulus-specific Cortical Visual Evoked Potential Morphological Patterns

Stimulus-specific Cortical Visual Evoked Potential Morphological Patterns

Published on: May 12, 2019

Stimulus-specific delay activity in human primary visual cortex.

John T Serences¹, Edward F Ester, Edward K Vogel

¹Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0109, USA.

Psychological Science

|January 28, 2009

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Information in working memory (WM) is maintained via sensory recruitment. Primary visual cortex (V1) shows sustained patterns, not just mean activation, representing stored features during WM tasks.

More Related Videos

A Large Lateral Craniotomy Procedure for Mesoscale Wide-field Optical Imaging of Brain Activity

A Large Lateral Craniotomy Procedure for Mesoscale Wide-field Optical Imaging of Brain Activity

Published on: May 7, 2017

Eye Movements in Visual Duration Perception: Disentangling Stimulus from Time in Predecisional Processes

Eye Movements in Visual Duration Perception: Disentangling Stimulus from Time in Predecisional Processes

Published on: January 19, 2024

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Jun 26, 2026

Stimulus-specific Cortical Visual Evoked Potential Morphological Patterns

Stimulus-specific Cortical Visual Evoked Potential Morphological Patterns

Published on: May 12, 2019

A Large Lateral Craniotomy Procedure for Mesoscale Wide-field Optical Imaging of Brain Activity

A Large Lateral Craniotomy Procedure for Mesoscale Wide-field Optical Imaging of Brain Activity

Published on: May 7, 2017

Eye Movements in Visual Duration Perception: Disentangling Stimulus from Time in Predecisional Processes

Eye Movements in Visual Duration Perception: Disentangling Stimulus from Time in Predecisional Processes

Published on: January 19, 2024

Area of Science:

Cognitive Neuroscience
Neuroimaging
Sensory Processing

Background:

Working memory (WM) is crucial for on-line information maintenance.
Sensory recruitment is an emerging theory for WM information storage.
Sustained neural activity in sensory areas is hypothesized to support WM.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the role of primary visual cortex (V1) in working memory maintenance.
To examine whether WM representations in V1 are sustained.
To compare WM representations with sensory processing patterns in V1.

Main Methods:

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was employed.
Multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) was used to analyze delay-period activity.
Comparison of delay-period activity patterns with sensory discrimination tasks.

Main Results:

Primary visual cortex (V1) showed no significant sustained increase in mean activation during the WM delay period.
Multivoxel pattern analysis revealed sustained, specific activation patterns in V1 representing stored features.
Delay-period activity patterns in V1 during WM were qualitatively similar to sensory discrimination patterns.

Conclusions:

Working memory representations in V1 are sustained via specific activation patterns, not just mean activation.
V1 contributes to working memory by maintaining representations that are similar to sensory evoked patterns.
Sensory recruitment plays a role in working memory, with V1 acting as a storage site for visual features.