Neural substrates of cognitive capacity limitations
Cognition has a severely limited capacity: Adult humans can retain only about four items “in mind”. This limitation is fundamental to human brain function: Individual capacity is highly correlated with intelligence measures and capacity is reduced in neuropsychiatric diseases. Although human capacit...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
2012
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/69008 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1298-2761 |
| _version_ | 1811078166126526464 |
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| author | Buschman, Tim Siegel, Markus Roy, Jefferson Miller, Earl K. |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Buschman, Tim Siegel, Markus Roy, Jefferson Miller, Earl K. |
| author_sort | Buschman, Tim |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Cognition has a severely limited capacity: Adult humans can retain only about four items “in mind”. This limitation is fundamental to human brain function: Individual capacity is highly correlated with intelligence measures and capacity is reduced in neuropsychiatric diseases. Although human capacity limitations are well studied, their mechanisms have not been investigated at the single-neuron level. Simultaneous recordings from monkey parietal and frontal cortex revealed that visual capacity limitations occurred immediately upon stimulus encoding and in a bottom-up manner. Capacity limitations were found to reflect a dual model of working memory. The left and right halves of visual space had independent capacities and thus are discrete resources. However, within each hemifield, neural information about successfully remembered objects was reduced by adding further objects, indicating that resources are shared. Together, these results suggest visual capacity limitation is due to discrete, slot-like, resources, each containing limited pools of neural information that can be divided among objects. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T10:54:48Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/69008 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T10:54:48Z |
| publishDate | 2012 |
| publisher | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/690082022-09-30T23:51:15Z Neural substrates of cognitive capacity limitations Buschman, Tim Siegel, Markus Roy, Jefferson Miller, Earl K. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT Picower Institute for Learning and Memory Miller, Earl K. Buschman, Tim Siegel, Markus Roy, Jefferson Miller, Earl K. Cognition has a severely limited capacity: Adult humans can retain only about four items “in mind”. This limitation is fundamental to human brain function: Individual capacity is highly correlated with intelligence measures and capacity is reduced in neuropsychiatric diseases. Although human capacity limitations are well studied, their mechanisms have not been investigated at the single-neuron level. Simultaneous recordings from monkey parietal and frontal cortex revealed that visual capacity limitations occurred immediately upon stimulus encoding and in a bottom-up manner. Capacity limitations were found to reflect a dual model of working memory. The left and right halves of visual space had independent capacities and thus are discrete resources. However, within each hemifield, neural information about successfully remembered objects was reduced by adding further objects, indicating that resources are shared. Together, these results suggest visual capacity limitation is due to discrete, slot-like, resources, each containing limited pools of neural information that can be divided among objects. National Science Foundation (U.S.). (CELEST OMA-0835976) National Institute of Mental Health (U.S.) (Grant 1R01MH091174-01) 2012-02-02T17:10:48Z 2012-02-02T17:10:48Z 2011-06 2011-03 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0027-8424 1091-6490 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/69008 Buschman, T. J. et al. “Neural substrates of cognitive capacity limitations.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108.27 (2011): 11252-11255. Web. 2 Feb. 2012. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1298-2761 en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1104666108 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. application/pdf Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) PNAS |
| spellingShingle | Buschman, Tim Siegel, Markus Roy, Jefferson Miller, Earl K. Neural substrates of cognitive capacity limitations |
| title | Neural substrates of cognitive capacity limitations |
| title_full | Neural substrates of cognitive capacity limitations |
| title_fullStr | Neural substrates of cognitive capacity limitations |
| title_full_unstemmed | Neural substrates of cognitive capacity limitations |
| title_short | Neural substrates of cognitive capacity limitations |
| title_sort | neural substrates of cognitive capacity limitations |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/69008 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1298-2761 |
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