Brain rhythms, attention, and memory
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1
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States
It has been known that brain waves (large scale oscillations of electrical activity) change with sleep, level of concentration etc., but their function has been unknown. We recently used multiple-electrode technology to discover specific roles for brain waves in working memory and attention. When monkeys held two pictures and their order of presentation “in mind” (in working memory), gamma band (32 Hz) brain waves seemed to provide different “memory slots” for each of the memories of the two pictures. This may keep them separate from each other and in their proper order and may also explain the first and foremost observation about consciousness: its limited capacity. It is difficult to think about multiple things simultaneously. We also trained monkeys to search for one particular tilted, colored, bar amongst a field of bars presented on a computer screen. We found that they spontaneously shifted their “spotlight of attention” serially focusing on particular locations where the target might be. What’s more, the study showed that brain waves act as a kind of built-in clock that provides a framework for shifting attention from one location to the next. The spotlight of attention shifted focus at 25-Hz intervals that were synchronized to 25-Hz oscillations in local field potentials. In general, these results suggest that cognition relies on neural mechanisms that operate in discrete, periodic computations.
Keywords:
gamma band,
working memory
Conference:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI), Palma, Mallorca, Spain, 25 Sep - 29 Sep, 2011.
Presentation Type:
Symposium: Oral Presentation
Topic:
Symposium 19: The relationship between attention and working memory
Citation:
Miller
EK
(2011). Brain rhythms, attention, and memory.
Conference Abstract:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2011.207.00579
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Received:
14 Nov 2011;
Published Online:
28 Nov 2011.
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Correspondence:
Prof. Earl K Miller, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States, ekmiller@mit.edu