Working memory capacity of crows and monkeys arises from similar neuronal computations
- Ruhr University Bochum, Germany
- University of Tübingen, Germany
Abstract
Complex cognition relies on flexible working memory, which is severely limited in its capacity. The neuronal computations underlying these capacity limits have been extensively studied in humans and in monkeys, resulting in competing theoretical models. We probed the working memory capacity of crows (Corvus corone) in a change detection task, developed for monkeys (Macaca mulatta), while we performed extracellular recordings of the prefrontal-like area nidopallium caudolaterale. We found that neuronal encoding and maintenance of information were affected by item load, in a way that is virtually identical to results obtained from monkey prefrontal cortex. Contemporary neurophysiological models of working memory employ divisive normalization as an important mechanism that may result in the capacity limitation. As these models are usually conceptualized and tested in an exclusively mammalian context, it remains unclear if they fully capture a general concept of working memory or if they are restricted to the mammalian neocortex. Here we report that carrion crows and macaque monkeys share divisive normalization as a neuronal computation that is in line with mammalian models. This indicates that computational models of working memory developed in the mammalian cortex can also apply to non-cortical associative brain regions of birds.
Data availability
All details of statistics reported in the manuscript is provided as a supporting file. Source data files of all figures will be made publicly available via dryad.
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Working memory capacity of crows and monkeys arises from similar neuronal computationsDryad Digital Repository, doi:10.5061/dryad.0k6djhb1q.
Article and author information
Author details
Lukas Alexander Hahn
Funding
Volkswagen Foundation (Freigeist Fellowship 93299)
- Jonas Rose
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Project B13 of the collaborative research center 874 (122679504))
- Jonas Rose
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All experimental procedures and housing conditions were carried out in accordance with the National Institutes of Health Guide for Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and were authorized by the national authority (LANUV protocol no. 84-02.04.2017.A001).
Copyright
© 2021, Hahn 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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Working memory capacity of crows and monkeys arises from similar neuronal computations
eLife 10:e72783.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.72783
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