Tracking Real-Time Changes in Working Memory Updating and Gating with the Event-Based Eye-Blink Rate.

ABSTRACT: Effective working memory (WM) functioning depends on the gating process that regulates the balance between maintenance and updating of WM. The present study used the event-based eye-blink rate (ebEBR), which presumably reflects phasic striatal dopamine activity, to examine how the cognitive processes of gating and updating separately facilitate flexible updating of WM contents and the potential involvement of dopamine in these processes. Real-time changes in eye blinks were tracked during performance on the reference-back task, in which demands on these two processes were independently manipulated. In all three experiments, trials that required WM updating and trials that required gate switching were both associated with increased ebEBR. These results may support the prefrontal cortex basa

SUBMITTER: Rac-Lubashevsky R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5451427 | biostudies-literature | 2017 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature