Article

Abstract

• Information from preceding trials of cognitive tasks can bias performance in the current trial, a phenomenon referred to as interference. Subjects performing visual working memory tasks exhibit interference in their responses: the recalled target location is biased in the direction of the target presented on the previous trial. We present modeling work that develops a probabilistic inference model of this history-dependent bias, and links our probabilistic model to computations of a recurrent network wherein short-term facilitation accounts for the observed bias. Network connectivity is reshaped dynamically during each trial, generating predictions from prior trial observations. Applying timescale separation methods, we obtain a low-dimensional description of the trial-to-trial bias based on the history of target locations. Furthermore, we demonstrate task protocols for which our model with facilitation performs better than a model with static connectivity: repetitively presented targets are better retained in working memory than targets drawn from uncorrelated sequences.

Creator

• Kilpatrick, Zachary P

Date Issued

• 2018-05-01

Academic Affiliation

• Applied Mathematics

Journal Title

• Scientific Reports

Journal Issue/Number

• 1

Journal Volume

• 8

Subject

• Visual task performance
• Mental task performance
• Interference
• Bias
• Short term memory
• Neural networks
• Memory
• Cognitive ability

Last Modified

• 2019-12-05

Resource Type

• Article

Rights Statement

• In Copyright

DOI

•  http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-25958-9

ISSN

• 2045-2322

Language

• English [eng]

License

• Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 International

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