Ruchkin et al./Working Memory Retention Systems: BBS Call for Commentators

Below is a link to the forthcoming BBS target article Working Memory Retention Systems: A State of Activated Long-Term Memory by Daniel S. Ruchkin, Jordan Grafman, Katherine Cameron, and Rita S. Berndt http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Ruchkin/Referees/ This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be BBS Associates or suggested by a BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please reply by EMAIL within three (3) weeks to: calls(a)bbsonline.org The Calls are sent to 10,000 BBS Associates, so there is no expectation (indeed, it would be calamitous) that each recipient should comment on every occasion! 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(In the meantime, your name, address and email address will be entered into our database as an unaffiliated investigator.) ======================================================================= ======================================================================= *** IMPORTANT *** To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, it would be most helpful if you would send us an indication of the relevant expertise you would bring to bear on the paper, and what aspect of the paper you would anticipate commenting upon. (Please note that we only request expertise information in order to simplify the selection process.) Please DO NOT prepare a commentary until you receive a formal invitation, indicating that it was possible to include your name on the final list, which is constructed so as to balance areas of expertise and frequency of prior commentaries in BBS. To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for this article, an electronic draft is retrievable at the URL that follows the abstract and keywords below. ======================================================================= ======================================================================= Working Memory Retention Systems: A State of Activated Long-Term Memory Daniel S. Ruchkin University of Maryland School of Medicine Department of Physiology Program in Neurosciences Baltimore, MD USA Jordan Grafman National Institutes of Health Cognitive Neuroscience Section NINDS Bethesda, MD USA Katherine Cameron Washington College Department of Psychology Chestertown, MD USA Rita S. Berndt University of Maryland School of Medicine Department of Neurology Program in Neurosciences Baltimore, MD USA ABSTRACT: High-temporal resolution event-related brain potential (ERP) and electroencephalographic (EEG) coherence studies of the neural substrate of short-term storage in working memory indicate that the sustained co-activation of both pre-frontal cortex and the posterior cortical systems that participate in the initial perception and comprehension of the retained information are involved in its storage. These studies further show that short-term storage mechanisms involve an increase in neural synchrony between pre-frontal cortex and posterior cortex, and enhanced activation of the long-term memory representations of the material held in short-term memory. This activation begins during the encoding/comprehension phase and evidently is prolonged into the retention phase by attentional drive from pre-frontal cortex control systems. A parsimonious interpretation of these findings is that the long-term memory systems associated with the posterior cortical processors provide the necessary representational basis for working memory, with the property of short-term memory decay being due to, primarily, the posterior system. In this view, there is no reason to posit specialized neural systems whose functions are limited to that of short-term storage buffers. Pre-frontal cortex provides the attentional pointer system for maintaining activation in the appropriate posterior processing systems. Limitations on the number of pointers that can be sustained by the pre-frontal control systems determines short-term memory capacity and phenomena such as displacement of information in short-term memory. KEYWORDS: Coherence; Event-Related Potentials; Short-Term Storage; Verbal; Visuo-Spatial; Working Memory http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Ruchkin/Referees/ ======================================================================= ======================================================================= ** SUPPLEMENTARY ANNOUNCEMENT ** (1) Call for Book Nominations for BBS Multiple Book Review In the past, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) had only been able to do 1-2 BBS multiple book treatments per year, because of our limited annual page quota. BBS's new expanded page quota will make it possible for us to increase the number of books we treat per year, so this is an excellent time for BBS Associates and biobehavioral/cognitive scientists in general to nominate books you would like to see accorded BBS multiple book review. (Authors may self-nominate, but books can only be selected on the basis of multiple nominations.) 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