J Exp Psychol Human Percept Perform 48:21-36 PMID: 35073141 Udale R, Tran MT, Manohar S, Husain M (2022) Dynamic in-flight shifts of working memory resources across saccades. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 8-853 PMID:25414654 (2014) Flexibility of representational states in working memory. Zokaei N, Ning S, Manohar S, Feredoes E, Husain M.

(2014) Changing concepts of working memory. Current Opinon in Behavioural Sciences 17:20-26.įallon S, Zokaei N, Husain M (2016) Causes and consequences of limitations in visual working memory. Manohar SG, Pertzov Y, Husain M (2017) Short-term memory for spatial, sequential and duration information. Zokaei N, Husain M (2019) Working Memory in Alzheimer’s Disease and Parkinson’s Disease Current Top Behav Neurosci (Epub ahead of print) PMID: 31347008 PUBLICATIONS LISTED HERE ARE AVAILABLE FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY You can find out more about our research on short-term / working memory and related topics, including application to patient populations, by downloading the articles below. Zokaei et al (2014) Brain Rolinski et al (2015) Brain Liang et al (2016) Cortex). Moreover, they provide sensitive means to measure memory in patients with neurodegenerative disorders or those at high risk of developing them (e.g. Recall precision also begins to decline over just seconds when more than one item is held in memory ( Pertzov et al (2012) JEP: HPP), while updating memory contents or ignoring distracting information have very different impacts on the quality of memory ( Fallon et al (2017) Cerebral Cortex).Īnalogue measures, which require participants to reproduce their recall of features, are a powerful means to model errors to obtain a better understanding of how memories are corrupted ( Bays, Catalao & Husain (2009) J Vision Ma, Husain & Bays (2014) Nature Neurosci ). With increasing number of items held in memory, the fidelity and resolution with which each object is stored declines in a systematic, predictable manner. Using precision of recall we have provided compelling evidence that visual working memory is not in fact ‘quantal’, but is better described as a limited resource that can be flexibly redistributed ( Bays, Catalao & Husain (2009) J Vision Ma, Husain & Bays (2014) Nature Neurosci ).

By measuring the error between your recollection and the true location, or orientation or colour we obtain the precision of your memory on a continuous, analogue scale ( Pertzov et al (2013) Brain Gorgoraptis et al (2011) J Neurosci Bays, Catalao & Husain (2009) J Vision ).

We can ask you to drag an item to its remembered location or ‘dial up’ your memory of its orientation, or point on a colour wheel to the colour that matches your recollection of its colour. In other words, we probe the quality of memory, not the quantity of items you can recall.

Previously, visual working memory was considered to be limited to a fixed number of items - just 3 or 4 - stored with every glimpse of the visual scene. Instead of asking whether you remember something or not, we ask how well you recall an object, e.g. Our research ( Bays & Husain (2008) Science) led to a challenge to conventional wisdom. It is considered to be a fundamental cognitive process, required to perform many everyday tasks and closely correlated to measures of intelligence. Working memory involves manipulation of the contents of short-term memory. Short-term memory is the brain mechanism which allows us to retain information over seconds.

Short term memory