Recruitment of the default mode network during a demanding act of executive control
Abstract
In the human brain, a default mode or task-negative network shows reduced activity during many cognitive tasks, and is often associated with internally-directed processes such as mind wandering and thoughts about the self. In contrast to this task-negative pattern, we show increased activity during a large and demanding switch in task set. Furthermore, we employ multi-voxel pattern analysis and find that regions of interest within default mode network are encoding task-relevant information during task performance. Activity in this network may be driven by major revisions of cognitive context, whether internally or externally focused.
Article and author information
Author details
Reviewing Editor
- David C Van Essen, Washington University in St Louis, United States
Ethics
Human subjects: Informed consent, and consent to publish, was obtained through the University of Cambridge ethics committee:CPREC (Cambridge Psychology Research Ethics) 2010.16.
Version history
- Received: January 15, 2015
- Accepted: April 11, 2015
- Accepted Manuscript published: April 13, 2015 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: May 12, 2015 (version 2)
- Version of Record updated: June 5, 2017 (version 3)
Copyright
© 2015, Crittenden et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Further reading
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- Neuroscience
Probing memory of a complex visual image within a few hundred milliseconds after its disappearance reveals significantly greater fidelity of recall than if the probe is delayed by as little as a second. Classically interpreted, the former taps into a detailed but rapidly decaying visual sensory or ‘iconic’ memory (IM), while the latter relies on capacity-limited but comparatively stable visual working memory (VWM). While iconic decay and VWM capacity have been extensively studied independently, currently no single framework quantitatively accounts for the dynamics of memory fidelity over these time scales. Here, we extend a stationary neural population model of VWM with a temporal dimension, incorporating rapid sensory-driven accumulation of activity encoding each visual feature in memory, and a slower accumulation of internal error that causes memorized features to randomly drift over time. Instead of facilitating read-out from an independent sensory store, an early cue benefits recall by lifting the effective limit on VWM signal strength imposed when multiple items compete for representation, allowing memory for the cued item to be supplemented with information from the decaying sensory trace. Empirical measurements of human recall dynamics validate these predictions while excluding alternative model architectures. A key conclusion is that differences in capacity classically thought to distinguish IM and VWM are in fact contingent upon a single resource-limited WM store.