Rate-distortion theory of neural coding and its implications for working memory

Abstract
Data availability
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Abstract

Rate-distortion theory provides a powerful framework for understanding the nature of human memory by formalizing the relationship between information rate (the average number of bits per stimulus transmitted across the memory channel) and distortion (the cost of memory errors). Here we show how this abstract computational-level framework can be realized by a model of neural population coding. The model reproduces key regularities of visual working memory, including some that were not previously explained by population coding models. We verify a novel prediction of the model by reanalyzing recordings of monkey prefrontal neurons during an oculomotor delayed response task.

Data availability

The current manuscript is a computational study, so no data have been generated for this manuscript. Source code can be found at https://github.com/amvjakob/wm-rate-distortion. The previously published datasets are available upon request from the corresponding authors of the published papers, Souza and Oberauer (2015), Daniel Bliss at al. (2017), Panichello et al. (2019). A minimally processed dataset from Barbosa et al. (2020) is available online ((https://github.com/comptelab/interplayPFC), with the raw data available upon request from the corresponding author of the published paper (raw monkey data available upon request to Christos Constantinidis cconstan@wakehealth.edu, and raw EEG data available upon request to Heike Stein, heike.c.stein@gmail.com). There are no specific application or approval processes involved in requesting these datasets.

The following previously published data sets were used

1. Paul Bays
(2014) Noise in Neural Populations Accounts for Errors in Working Memory
OSF, s7dhn.

https://osf.io/s7dhn/
1. Joao Barbosa
(2020) Interplay between persistent activity and activity-silent dynamics in the prefrontal cortex underlies serial biases in working memory
https://github.com/comptelab/interplayPFC.

https://github.com/comptelab/interplayPFC
1. Joshua Foster
(2017) Alpha-band activity reveals spontaneous representations of spatial position in visual working memory
OSF, vw4uc.

https://osf.io/vw4uc/

Article and author information

Author details

Anthony MV Jakob

Department of Neurobiology, Harvard University, Cambridge, United States

For correspondence
anthony_jakob@hms.harvard.edu

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-0996-1356
Samuel J Gershman

Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-6546-3298

Funding

Fondation Bertarelli (Bertarelli Fellowship)

Anthony MV Jakob

National Science Foundation (NSF STC award,CCF-1231216)

Samuel J Gershman

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Copyright

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.