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Working memory and active sampling of the environment: Medial temporal contributions.
Stefan Pollmann1, Werner X Schneider2
1Department of Psychology and Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences, Otto-von-Guericke-University, Magdeburg, Germany.
Handbook of Clinical Neurology
|August 14, 2022
Summary
The medial temporal lobe (MTL) is crucial for working memory (WM), especially in retaining complex information and selecting sensory input. It plays a key role in transferring information from long-term memory (LTM) to WM.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
Background:
- Working memory (WM) involves maintaining and processing information for intelligent action.
- The temporal lobe, particularly the medial temporal lobe (MTL), is implicated in WM functions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review the contributions of the MTL to working memory.
- To explore MTL's role in retaining complex relational bindings and neural mechanisms of WM encoding and maintenance.
- To examine MTL's involvement in active sampling of environmental information and its bidirectional relationship with memory.
Main Methods:
- Review of neuropsychological evidence for MTL involvement in WM maintenance.
- Examination of neural mechanisms of WM encoding and maintenance, including interactions with ventral temporal cortex.
- Analysis of memory-based sampling studies (scene/object inspection, visual exploration, memory-guided visual search).
Main Results:
- MTL is crucial for retaining complex relational bindings between memorized features.
- MTL interacts with ventral temporal cortex in WM encoding and maintenance.
- MTL influences the bidirectional relationship between active sampling and memory, controlling sampling and selecting WM input.
Conclusions:
- The MTL plays a significant role in selecting information from perception and transferring it to capacity-limited WM.
- MTL is vital for complex information retention and the dynamic interplay between memory and information sampling.
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