RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Neuronal Correlates of Visual Working Memory in the Corvid Endbrain
JF The Journal of Neuroscience
JO J. Neurosci.
FD Society for Neuroscience
SP 7778
OP 7786
DO 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0612-14.2014
VO 34
IS 23
A1 Veit, Lena
A1 Hartmann, Konstantin
A1 Nieder, Andreas
YR 2014
UL http://www.jneurosci.org/content/34/23/7778.abstract
AB The concept of working memory is key to cognitive functioning. Working memory encompasses the capacity to retain immediately past information, to process this information, and to use it to guide goal-directed behavior. Corvid songbirds are renowned for their high-level cognitive capabilities, but where and how visual information is temporarily retained by neurons in the avian brain in a behaviorally relevant way remains poorly understood. We trained four carrion crows (Corvus corone) on versions of a delayed match-to-sample task that required the crows to remember a visual stimulus for later comparison. While the crows performed the task, we recorded the activity of single neurons in the nidopallium caudolaterale (NCL), a pallial association area of the avian endbrain. We show that many NCL neurons encode information about visual stimuli and temporarily maintain this information after the stimulus disappeared by sustained delay activity. Selective delay activity allows the birds to hold relevant information in memory and correlates with discrimination behavior. This suggests that sustained activity of NCL neurons is a neuronal correlate of visual working memory in the corvid brain and serves to bridge temporal gaps, thereby offering a workspace for processing immediately past visual information.