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Active removal of information from working memory invokes the concerted recruitment of distributed neocortical regions

Poster Session E - Monday, March 9, 2026, 2:30 – 4:30 pm PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Renata Cruz^1,2 (), Thomas Christophel^1,2; ¹Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, ²Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience and Berlin Center for Advanced Neuroimaging, Charité Universitätsmedizin

The ability to actively remove irrelevant items from working memory storage is essential for goal-directed behavior. However, the mechanisms underlying active removal of information remain largely unknown. Importantly, exerting control over attentional selection of a memorized stimulus requires information about this specific selection. Our recent work provides evidence that this information is represented in the form of selection-specific activity in parietal and temporal regions. Here, we employ fMRI and MVPA to identify selection-specific activity across the cortex through a multimodal retro-cued n-Back discrimination task. Subjects were tasked with memorizing an item, either visual or auditory, until a colored retro-cue indicated if that item should be remembered or forgotten. Thus, while prior work investigated which process underly the selection between two items, the current study focuses on the fate of a singular item. Selection suppressed the representation of the to-be-forgotten item in visual and parietal cortex, as indicated by reduced item-specific decodability. To identify areas that carry selection-specific information, whether an item should be actively removed from working memory, we performed a whole-brain searchlight analysis (cvMANOVA for ‘remember’ versus ‘forget’) for the period following the cue onset. We find a wide array of frontal and parietal brain regions holding this information, including precentral and lateral prefrontal cortex as well posterior and medial parietal regions, across both stimulus modalities. These results highlight that active removal of working memory contents occurs in both sensory and non-sensory cortical regions and reveal a generalized, modality-independent mechanism for cognitive control of information stored in working memory.

Topic Area: EXECUTIVE PROCESSES: Working memory