Higher-order Cortex Maintains Supramodal and Cross-modal Representations during Working Memory

Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre 

Working memory is a fundamental cognitive process essential for guiding our behavior in daily life, where sensory information flows continuously from the external world (Baddeley, 1986; D'Esposito & Postle, 2015). While numerous studies have demonstrated that sensory information maintained in working memory is localized within the corresponding sensory areas (Harrison & Tong, 2009; Kumar et al., 2016; Lee & Baker, 2016; Schmidt & Blankenburg, 2018), a challenge persists in utilizing this retained sensory information without interfering with concurrent sensory input of the same modality (Bettencourt & Xu, 2016; Christophel et al., 2017; Xu, 2017). One plausible hypothesis to address this issue is the dual maintenance of essential information in higher-order cortical areas in a form different from sensory representations (Christophel et al., 2017; Riley & Constantinidis, 2016). However, little empirical evidence supports the existence of such high-level representations. In this study, we provide evidence of two distinct forms of high-level representations by directly comparing working memory of tactile and visual stimuli.