Decoding working memory and perceptual choice during tactile information processing

Abstract

Working memory and decision-making are two building blocks of human cog-nition that are involved in most goal-directed behaviors. Exposing the neural underpinnings of these mental functions has been a central goal of cognitive and systems neuroscience. Critically, most models and theories have emerged from empirical findings in the visual domain, leaving open the question of whether they hold for other sensory domains. In this dissertation, I aimed at studying the neural correlates of working memory and decision-making during tactile information processing. In particular, I con-ducted four fMRI studies to address the question of which brain regions repre-sent the contents of working memory and perceptual choices. We found para-metric working memory representation of vibrotactile frequencies distributed across sensory, posterior parietal, and frontal cortices. This finding was also replicated in the visual and auditory modalities. Perceptual choices are repre-sented in the prefrontal and oculomotor regions, even when decoupled from saccade plans. These results support the view that the loci of mental representations depend critically on task requirements and content types.