Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation of the Right Superior Parietal Lobule Modulates the Retro-Cue Benefit in Visual Short-Term Memory
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Materia
Visual short-term memory Superior parietal lobe (SPL) Superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) Spatial attention
Date
2021-02-18Referencia bibliográfica
Botta, F.; Lupiáñez, J.; Santangelo, V.; Martín-Arévalo, E. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation of the Right Superior Parietal Lobule Modulates the Retro-Cue Benefit in Visual Short-Term Memory. Brain Sci. 2021, 11, 252. [https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11020252]
Sponsorship
Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness; European Commission PSI2015-73503-JINAbstract
Several studies have shown enhanced performance in change detection tasks when spatial
cues indicating the probe’s location are presented after the memory array has disappeared (i.e.,
retro-cues) compared with spatial cues that are presented simultaneously with the test array (i.e.,
post-cues). This retro-cue benefit led some authors to propose the existence of two different stores
of visual short-term memory: a weak but high-capacity store (fragile memory (FM)) linked to the
effect of retro-cues and a robust but low-capacity store (working memory (WM)) linked to the effect
of post-cues. The former is thought to be an attention-free system, whereas the latter would strictly
depend on selective attention. Nonetheless, this dissociation is under debate, and several authors
do not consider retro-cues as a proxy to measure the existence of an independent memory system
(e.g., FM).We approached this controversial issue by altering the attention-related functions in the
right superior parietal lobule (SPL) by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), whose effects were
mediated by the integrity of the right superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF). Specifically, we asked
whether TMS on the SPL affected the performance of retro cues vs. post-cues to a similar extent. The
results showed that TMS on the SPL, mediated by right SLF-III integrity, produced a modulation of
the retro-cue benefit, namely a memory capacity decrease in the post-cues but not in the retro-cues.
These findings have strong implications for the debate on the existence of independent stages of
visual short-term memory and for the growing literature showing a key role of the SLF for explaining
the variability of TMS effects across participants.