Psychology

Stimulus representation in human frontal cortex supports flexible control in working memory

Z. Shao, M. Zhang, et al.

Holding visual information in working memory engages both visual and frontal cortices: visual areas support precise maintenance while frontal areas flexibly represent stimuli to meet control demands. Using trial-by-trial fMRI and recurrent neural network simulations, the study shows frontal stimulus coding shifts with control demands and trades off with emergent category representations. This research was conducted by Zhujun Shao, Mengya Zhang, and Qing Yu.