Hippocampal involvement in working memory following refreshing.

Abstract

Working memory (WM) and long-term memory (LTM) tests have both overlapping and distinct neurocognitive processes. Hippocampal activity in fMRI studies-a hallmark of LTM-also occurs on WM tasks, typically during encoding or retrieval and sometimes (albeit rarely) through 'late-delay' periods. The Synaptic Theory of WM suggests that 'activity-silent' synaptic weights retain temporary, WM-relevant codes without sustained, elevated activity. The hippocampus temporarily retains item-context bindings during WM-delays that are typically 'silent' to fMRI, probably via oscillatory patterns of informational connectivity among task-relevant regions of cortex. Advancing WM theory will require modeling this dynamic interplay, as in the 'Dynamic Processing Model of WM.