QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

HOME  |   SEARCH  |   ARCHIVE  |   SUBSCRIBE  |   CONTACT  |   HELP

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Submit an eLetter Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Tallon-Baudry, C. Articles by Fischer, C. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Tallon-Baudry, C. Articles by Fischer, C.

 Previous Article  |  Next Article 

The Journal of Neuroscience, 2001, 21:RC177:1-5

RAPID COMMUNICATION
Oscillatory Synchrony between Human Extrastriate Areas during Visual Short-Term Memory Maintenance

Catherine Tallon-Baudry¹, Olivier Bertrand¹, and Catherine Fischer²

¹ Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale U280, 69003 Lyon, France, and ²  Neurological Hospital, 69003 Lyon, France

How do we keep an object in mind? Based on evidence from animal electrophysiology and human brain-imaging techniques, it is commonly held that short-term memory relies on sustained activity in a network distributed over sensory and prefrontal cortices. How does neural firing persist in such a distributed network in the absence of visual input? Hebb's influential but so far unproved proposal, developed more than 50 years ago, is that sustained activation in short-term memory networks is maintained by reverberating activity in neuronal loops. We hypothesized that synchronized oscillatory activity, proposed to provide a dynamic link between distributed areas, could not only coordinate activity in the network but also establish reentrant loops in the system to enable both sustained firing and temporal coincidence of inputs. We show in human intracranial recordings that limited regions of extrastriate visual areas, separated by several centimeters, become synchronized in an oscillatory mode during the rehearsal of an object in visual short-term memory. Synchrony occurs specifically in the  range (15-25 Hz) and disappears in a control condition. These findings thus confirm experimentally the hypothesis of a functional role of synchronized oscillatory activity in the coordination of distributed neural activity in humans, and support Hebb's popular but unproved concept of short-term memory maintenance by reentrant activity within the activated network.

Key words: visual short-term memory; delayed-matching-to-sample task; oscillations; synchrony; cell assembly; intracranial human EEG

---

Copyright © Society for Neuroscience  0270-6474//$05.00/0

This article has been cited by other articles:

				A. R. Nikolaev, S. Gepshtein, P. Gong, and C. van Leeuwen Duration of Coherence Intervals in Electrical Brain Activity in Perceptual Organization Cereb Cortex, July 13, 2009; (2009) bhp107v1. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				P. Sehatpour, S. Molholm, T. H. Schwartz, J. R. Mahoney, A. D. Mehta, D. C. Javitt, P. K. Stanton, and J. J. Foxe A human intracranial study of long-range oscillatory coherence across a frontal-occipital-hippocampal brain network during visual object processing PNAS, March 18, 2008; 105(11): 4399 - 4404. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				C. Martin, J. Beshel, and L. M. Kay An Olfacto-Hippocampal Network Is Dynamically Involved in Odor-Discrimination Learning J Neurophysiol, October 1, 2007; 98(4): 2196 - 2205. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				W. P. Medendorp, G. F.I. Kramer, O. Jensen, R. Oostenveld, J.-M. Schoffelen, and P. Fries Oscillatory Activity in Human Parietal and Occipital Cortex Shows Hemispheric Lateralization and Memory Effects in a Delayed Double-Step Saccade Task Cereb Cortex, October 1, 2007; 17(10): 2364 - 2374. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				J. Kujala, K. Pammer, P. Cornelissen, A. Roebroeck, E. Formisano, and R. Salmelin Phase Coupling in a Cerebro-Cerebellar Network at 8-13 Hz during Reading Cereb Cortex, June 1, 2007; 17(6): 1476 - 1485. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				M. D'Esposito From cognitive to neural models of working memory Phil Trans R Soc B, May 29, 2007; 362(1481): 761 - 772. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				F. C. Joelving, A. Compte, and C. Constantinidis Temporal Properties of Posterior Parietal Neuron Discharges During Working Memory and Passive Viewing J Neurophysiol, March 1, 2007; 97(3): 2254 - 2266. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				A. Wrobel, A. Ghazaryan, M. Bekisz, W. Bogdan, and J. Kaminski Two Streams of Attention-Dependent {beta} Activity in the Striate Recipient Zone of Cat's Lateral Posterior-Pulvinar Complex J. Neurosci., February 28, 2007; 27(9): 2230 - 2240. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				M. Rose, T. Sommer, and C. Buchel Integration of Local Features to a Global Percept by Neural Coupling Cereb Cortex, October 1, 2006; 16(10): 1522 - 1528. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				M. G. Knyazeva, E. Fornari, R. Meuli, and P. Maeder Interhemispheric Integration at Different Spatial Scales: The Evidence From EEG Coherence and fMRI J Neurophysiol, July 1, 2006; 96(1): 259 - 275. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				J. Jung, J. Hudry, P. Ryvlin, J.-P. Royet, O. Bertrand, and J.-P. Lachaux Functional Significance of Olfactory-induced Oscillations in the Human Amygdala Cereb Cortex, January 1, 2006; 16(1): 1 - 8. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				M. Rose and C. Buchel Neural Coupling Binds Visual Tokens to Moving Stimuli J. Neurosci., November 2, 2005; 25(44): 10101 - 10104. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				J. M. Palva, S. Palva, and K. Kaila Phase Synchrony among Neuronal Oscillations in the Human Cortex J. Neurosci., April 13, 2005; 25(15): 3962 - 3972. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				C. J. Fiebach, T. Gruber, and G. G. Supp Neuronal Mechanisms of Repetition Priming in Occipitotemporal Cortex: Spatiotemporal Evidence from Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Electroencephalography J. Neurosci., March 30, 2005; 25(13): 3414 - 3422. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				T. Gruber and M. M. Muller Oscillatory Brain Activity Dissociates between Associative Stimulus Content in a Repetition Priming Task in the Human EEG Cereb Cortex, January 1, 2005; 15(1): 109 - 116. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				J. Gross, F. Schmitz, I. Schnitzler, K. Kessler, K. Shapiro, B. Hommel, and A. Schnitzler Modulation of long-range neural synchrony reflects temporal limitations of visual attention in humans PNAS, August 31, 2004; 101(35): 13050 - 13055. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				R. A. Veselis Editorial II: Gone but not forgotten--or was it? Br. J. Anaesth., February 1, 2004; 92(2): 161 - 163. [Full Text] [PDF]

				A. Compte,, C. Constantinidis, J. Tegner, S. Raghavachari, M. V. Chafee, P. S. Goldman-Rakic, and X.-J. Wang Temporally Irregular Mnemonic Persistent Activity in Prefrontal Neurons of Monkeys During a Delayed Response Task J Neurophysiol, November 1, 2003; 90(5): 3441 - 3454. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				D. S. Rizzuto, J. R. Madsen, E. B. Bromfield, A. Schulze-Bonhage, D. Seelig, R. Aschenbrenner-Scheibe, and M. J. Kahana Reset of human neocortical oscillations during a working memory task PNAS, June 24, 2003; 100(13): 7931 - 7936. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Home  |   Search  |   Archive  |   Subscribe  |   Contact  |   Help