Retrospective Cues Mitigate Information Loss in Human Cortex during Working Memory Storage

Working memory (WM) enables the flexible representation of information over short intervals. It is well established that WM performance can be enhanced by a retrospective cue presented during storage, yet the neural mechanisms responsible for this benefit are unclear. Here, we tested several explanations for retrospective cue benefits by quantifying changes in spatial WM representations reconstructed from alpha-band (8–12 Hz) EEG activity recorded from human participants (both sexes) before and after the presentation of a retrospective cue. This allowed us to track cue-related changes in WM representations with high temporal resolution (tens of milliseconds). Participants encoded the locations of two colored discs for subsequent report. During neutral trials, an uninformative cue instructed participants to remember the locations of both discs across a blank delay, and we observed a monotonic decrease in the fidelity of reconstructed spatial WM representations with time. During valid trials, a 100% reliable cue indicated that the color of the disc participants would be probed to report. Critically, valid cues were presented immediately after the termination of the encoding display ["valid early" (VE) trials] or midway through the delay period ["valid late" (VL) trials]. During VE trials, the gradual loss of location-specific information observed during neutral trials was eliminated, while during VL trials it was partially reversed. Our findings suggest that retrospective cues engage several different mechanisms that together serve to mitigate information loss during WM storage.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Working memory (WM) performance can be improved by a cue presented during storage. This effect, termed a retrospective cue benefit, has been used to explore the limitations of attentional prioritization in WM. However, the mechanisms responsible for retrospective cue benefits are unclear. Here we tested several explanations for retrospective cue benefits by examining how they influence WM representations reconstructed from human EEG activity. This approach allowed us to visualize, quantify, and track the effects of retrospective cues with high temporal resolution (on the order of tens of milliseconds). We show that under different circumstances retrospective cues can both eliminate and even partially reverse information loss during WM storage, suggesting that retrospective cue benefits have manifold origins.