Schedule of Events | Search Abstracts | Invited Symposia | Symposia | Poster Sessions | Data Blitz

Visual working memory representations of naturalistic images in the early visual cortex are not sensory-like

Poster Session F - Tuesday, March 10, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom
Also presenting in Data Blitz Session 4 - Saturday, March 7, 2026, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm PST, Salon F.

Leonardo Pettini^1,2,3,4 (), Carsten Bogler², Kai Görgen^2,8, Karla Matic^1,2,4, Christian Doeller^3,4,5, John-Dylan Haynes^{1,2,4,6,7,8,9}; ¹Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany, ²Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin and Berlin Center for Advanced Neuroimaging, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin (corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health), Berlin, Germany, ³Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany, ⁴Max Planck School of Cognition, Leipzig, Germany, ⁵Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, Centre for Neural Computation, The Egil and Pauline Braathen and Fred Kavli Centre for Cortical Microcircuits, Jebsen Centre for Alzheimer’s Disease, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway, ⁶Clinic of Neurology, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany, ⁷Berlin Center for Advanced Neuroimaging, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany, ⁸Research Cluster of Excellence “Science of Intelligence”, Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany, ⁹Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Sensory working memory has long been thought to be supported by sustained activity in prefrontal and parietal areas. This view has been challenged by the “sensory recruitment model”, which proposed that sensory areas are involved in the maintenance of working memory representations. Evidence for this model comes from human neuroimaging studies using multivariate pattern analysis showing that working memory contents can be decoded from sensory areas during maintenance. However, the presence of stimulus-related information in sensory regions, does not necessarily indicate that this information is encoded in a perceptual format, similar to how sensory stimuli are initially encoded. Working memory contents could instead be encoded in distinct formats, potentially undergoing dynamic changes throughout the delay phase. This question has rarely been examined directly. Here, we address this gap by requiring participants to briefly memorize naturalistic object-scene stimuli. These stimuli were generated synthetically using a procedure based on a generative AI model (Stable Diffusion), which allowed us to control the similarity between them parametrically. We directly compared the way information is encoded in patterns of brain activity in the early visual cortex during perception and working memory maintenance. Consistent with prior work, we found robust stimulus-related information throughout the delay period. However, despite robust information, the encoding of memory contents in the later delay period did not employ the same format as during pure perception. This result was replicated in higher visual areas as well. Thus, although sensory areas contain working-memory-related information, the format of this information is not strictly sensory-like.

Topic Area: EXECUTIVE PROCESSES: Working memory