Current and future goals are represented in opposite patterns in object-selective cortex

• Main Authors: Anouk Mariette van Loon, Katya Olmos-Solis, Johannes Jacobus Fahrenfort, Christian NL Olivers
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: eLife Sciences Publications Ltd 2018-11-01
• Series: eLife
• Subjects: working memory; visual attention; cognitive control; multivariate pattern decoding; category representations; prospective memory
• Online Access: https://elifesciences.org/articles/38677

Adaptive behavior requires the separation of current from future goals in working memory. We used fMRI of object-selective cortex to determine the representational (dis)similarities of memory representations serving current and prospective perceptual tasks. Participants remembered an object drawn from three possible categories as the target for one of two consecutive visual search tasks. A cue indicated whether the target object should be looked for first (currently relevant), second (prospectively relevant), or if it could be forgotten (irrelevant). Prior to the first search, representations of current, prospective and irrelevant objects were similar, with strongest decoding for current representations compared to prospective (Experiment 1) and irrelevant (Experiment 2). Remarkably, during the first search, prospective representations could also be decoded, but revealed anti-correlated voxel patterns compared to currently relevant representations of the same category. We propose that the brain separates current from prospective memories within the same neuronal ensembles through opposite representational patterns.