And some studies suggest there is no link.įor example, he says, lab experiments suggest that the amount of rhythmic firing going on doesn't seem to have much effect on working memory performance.Īlso Miller's contention that working memory is linked to long-term memory seems at odds with doctors' experience with patients whose brains have been injured, Constantinidis says. "The problem with the theory is that so far there has been no experimental evidence linking this critical variable with behavior," Constantinidis says. Shots - Health News In Memory Training Smackdown, One Method Dominates And Miller and others have made an important contribution to the field by detecting the bursts of activity from working memory neurons, he says. Miller's model of working memory is "very attractive on theoretical grounds," Constantinidis says, because it explains some things that are hard to explain with the standard model. "How do you gain control over your own thoughts?" "It opens up what is the most difficult but the most exciting question about working memory, which is volition," Miller says. If working memory really does interact with other parts of the brain in this way, it could explain how areas involved in planning and decision-making are able to control what information stays in working memory and what gets deleted. "But then because these memories are stored in latent form, they can be reactivated." "If you drop your coffee on the way to the phone, activity in your brain switches to the dropping of the coffee," Miller says.
And that could explain how we are able to keep a phone number in mind, even if we get distracted momentarily. Miller's model would allow information from working memory to be stored in a latent form, much the way long-term memories are stored. They also faced off with dual perspectives in the Journal of Neuroscience in August. They also agree that problems with working memory are a common symptom of brain disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.īut they are on opposite sides of a lively debate about how working memory works.īoth scientists are presenting evidence to support their position at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego this week.
Miller and Constantinidis agree that working memory is critical to just about everything the brain does. It's also "a core component of higher cognitive functions like planning or language or intelligence," says Christos Constantinidis, a professor of neurobiology and anatomy at Wake Forest School of Medicine. "Working memory is the sketchpad of your mind it's the contents of your conscious thoughts," says Earl Miller, a professor of neuroscience at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. These are the times you need working memory, the brain's system for temporarily holding important information. You glance at a phone number you're about to call. How does the brain's working memory actually work?