Working memory (WM) is the ability to remember and manipulate information for short time intervals. Recent studies have proposed that sustained firing encoding the contents of WM is ubiquitous across cortical neurons. We review here the collective evidence supporting this claim. A variety of studies report that neurons in prefrontal, parietal, and inferotemporal association cortices show robust sustained activity encoding the location and features of memoranda during WM tasks. However, reports of WM-related sustained activity in early sensory areas are rare, and typically lack stimulus specificity. We propose that robust sustained activity that can support WM coding arises as a property of association cortices downstream from the early stages of sensory processing.

中文翻译：

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持续活动编码工作记忆：未完全分布

工作记忆 (WM) 是在短时间内记住和操作信息的能力。最近的研究表明，持续放电编码 WM 的内容在整个皮层神经元中无处不在。我们在这里回顾了支持这一主张的集体证据。多项研究报告称，在 WM 任务期间，前额叶、顶叶和颞下关联皮质中的神经元表现出强大的持续活动，对备忘录的位置和特征进行编码。然而，早期感觉区域中 WM 相关持续活动的报告很少，并且通常缺乏刺激特异性。我们提出，可以支持 WM 编码的稳健持续活动是感觉处理早期阶段下游关联皮质的一种属性。