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Updated: Jan 15, 2026
07:12
Development of a Gaze-Contingent Display Framework Designed for Perceptual and Oculomotor Research with Simulated Central Vision Loss
Published on: April 11, 2025
876
Motor Control Processes Moderate Visual Working Memory Gating.
Şahcan Özdemir1, Eren Günseli2, Daniel Schneider3
1Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors, Dortmund 44139, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany oezdemir@ifado.de.
Summary
Motor actions can interfere with visual working memory (WM) storage by introducing irrelevant sensory information. A control mechanism involving frontal theta activity helps mitigate this interference.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Neuroscience
- Psychology
Background:
- Sensory gating and motor planning share neural mechanisms, suggesting interaction.
- Understanding this interaction is key to explaining sensory interference in visual working memory (WM).
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how motor actions cause sensory interference during visual WM storage.
- To explore the role of motor control and selective gating in this process.
Main Methods:
- A delayed match-to-sample task was used to assess visual WM.
- Participants memorized target color, with shape indicating response hand.
- An interference task, sometimes with irrelevant color, was introduced during the retention interval.
- Electroencephalography (EEG) was used to record neural activity.
Main Results:
- Early motor planning (mu/beta suppression) occurred during sensory encoding.
- Interference primarily occurred when the interfering task included irrelevant color.
- WM performance was impaired by irrelevant sensory information, causing color bias.
- Frontal theta activity correlated with reduced bias, indicating a control mechanism.
Conclusions:
- Sensory WM updating can be influenced by interfering motor actions.
- Selective gating, dependent on motor control, plays a role in managing interference.
- A reactive control mechanism involving frontal theta activity compensates for sensory interference.
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