Join us in congratulating Dr. Steve Bressler for his recent paper in the high profile journal, Science: Content-Specific Fronto-Parietal Synchronization During Visual Working Memory. Salazar RF, Dotson NM, Bressler SL, Gray CM. Science. 2012 Nov 1.
"The Holy Grail of neuroscience has been to understand how and where information is encoded in the brain. This study provides more evidence that large scale electrical oscillations across distant brain regions may carry information for visual memories" - NIMH director Thomas R. Insel, M.D.
"A brain visual working memory circuit holds information in mind about what has just been seen. It represents the memory and distinguishes among objects via unique patterns of brain wave synchronization between neurons in the circuit. For example, two distant hubs in the circuit, one at the front of the brain (right circle) and the other at the rear side (left circle), showed varying amounts of synchrony in their brain waves, depending on what object a monkey was holding in memory. The coherence of synchronous activity between cells in these regions was plotted for different objects the monkey saw over several trials. The large area of red in the lowest graph indicates that the brain waves in the two regions were highly in-sync after seeing a particular object – indicating that they were highly involved in holding in short-term memory information about that object. The modest amount of red for the top graph indicates lesser involvement for another object. By contrast, lack of red in the middle graph shows that the two groups of neurons weren’t much involved in remembering a third object. So the memory of any particular object appears to be represented by its own unique mix of neurons oscillating in-sync."
In addition to NIMH, the research was also supported by the NIH's
National Institute on Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).
Content-Specific Fronto-Parietal Synchronization During Visual Working Memory. Salazar RF, Dotson NM, Bressler SL, Gray CM. Science. 2012 Nov 1. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 23118014
The Cognitive Neurodynamics Laboratory is a research group within the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences at Florida Atlantic University. The central goal of our laboratory is to understand the spatio-temporal dynamics of activity in the brain as it relates to cognitive function. Our theoretical and experimental studies focus on the investigation of large-scale networks in the cerebral cortex.
Laboratory Website: Cognitive Neurodynamics Laboratory
Head: Dr. Steven L. Bressler