Neuron
Volume 88, Issue 2, 21 October 2015, Pages 367-377
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Article
Cortical and Subcortical Contributions to Short-Term Memory for Orienting Movements

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2015.08.033Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • Optogenetics probes precisely when FOF and SC are needed for memory-guided orienting

  • Behavioral effect of silencing FOF or SC decreases monotonically during each trial

  • Attractor model reconciles decreasing perturbability with increasing neural encoding

  • Key attractor model predictions are confirmed

Summary

Neural activity in frontal cortical areas has been causally linked to short-term memory (STM), but whether this activity is necessary for forming, maintaining, or reading out STM remains unclear. In rats performing a memory-guided orienting task, the frontal orienting fields in cortex (FOF) are considered critical for STM maintenance, and during each trial display a monotonically increasing neural encoding for STM. Here, we transiently inactivated either the FOF or the superior colliculus and found that the resulting impairments in memory-guided orienting performance followed a monotonically decreasing time course, surprisingly opposite to the neural encoding. A dynamical attractor model in which STM relies equally on cortical and subcortical regions reconciled the encoding and inactivation data. We confirmed key predictions of the model, including a time-dependent relationship between trial difficulty and perturbability, and substantial, supralinear, impairment following simultaneous inactivation of the FOF and superior colliculus during memory maintenance.

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