Investigating the Roles of the Visual and Parietal Cortex in Representing Content versus Context in Visual Working Memory

Abstract

Content-to-context binding is crucial for working memory performance. Using a dual-serial retrocueing (DSR) task on oriented gratings, Yu et al. (2020) found that content (orientation) of both prioritized and unprioritized memory items (PMI; UMI) was represented simultaneously in visual cortex, while their context (location) was represented in intraparietal sulcus (IPS), with a priority-based remapping of the representation of content and context of the UMI in each region, respectively. This registered report acquired fMRI of 24 healthy adults while they performed a DSR task with location as the to-be-reported content and orientation as the task-relevant context. We contrasted three accounts: domain-dependent, the engagement of visual and parietal regions depends on the feature domain (orientation vs location); functional, the engagement of these regions depends on their function (content vs context); and hybrid—a combination of the domain-dependent account and the additional stipulation that IPS encodes context regardless of domain. Delay-period activity in early visual cortex conformed most closely with functional predictions: robust priority-sensitive representation of stimulus location (content), but no evidence for the active representation of stimulus orientation (context). Delay-period activity in IPS, in contrast, conformed most closely to predictions of the hybrid account: active representation of content (location) and of prioritized context (orientation). Exploratory analyses further supported the hybrid account of IPS, revealing univariate sensitivity to variation in both content and context load, the latter in a manner that predicted individual differences in behavior. The representation of visual information in working memory is highly dependent on behavioral context.