A simultaneous EEG-fMRI study of thalamic load-dependent working memory delay period activity

Bernard A Gomes; Chelsea Reichert Plaska; Jefferson Ortega; Timothy M Ellmore

doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1132061

A simultaneous EEG-fMRI study of thalamic load-dependent working memory delay period activity

Front Behav Neurosci. 2023 Feb 23:17:1132061. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1132061. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Bernard A Gomes¹, Chelsea Reichert Plaska², Jefferson Ortega³, Timothy M Ellmore^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Program in Cognitive Neuroscience, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, New York, NY, United States.
² Doctoral Program in Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, New York, NY, United States.
³ Department of Psychology, The City College of the City University of New York, New York, NY, United States.

Abstract

Introduction: Working memory (WM) is an essential component of executive functions which depend on maintaining task-related information online for brief periods in both the presence and absence of interfering stimuli. Active maintenance occurs during the WM delay period, the time between stimulus encoding and subsequent retrieval. Previous studies have extensively documented prefrontal and posterior parietal cortex activity during the WM delay period, but the role of subcortical structures including the thalamus remains to be fully elucidated, especially in humans.

Methods: Using a simultaneous electroencephalogram (EEG)-functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) approach, we investigated the role of the thalamus during the WM delay period in a modified Sternberg paradigm following low and high memory load encoding of naturalistic scenes. During the delay, participants passively viewed scrambled scenes containing similar color and spatial frequency to serve as a perceptual baseline. Individual source estimation was weighted by the location of the thalamic fMRI signal relative to the WM delay period onset.

Results: The effects memory load on maintenance were observed bilaterally in thalamus with higher EEG source amplitudes in the low compared to high load condition occurring 160-390 ms after the onset of the delay period.

Conclusion: The main finding that thalamic activation was elevated during the low compared to high condition despite similar duration of perceptual input and upcoming motor requirements suggests a capacity-limited role for sensory filtering of the thalamus during consolidation of stimuli into WM, where the highest activity occurs when fewer stimuli need to be maintained in the presence of interfering perceptual stimuli during the delay. The results are discussed in the context of theories regarding the role of the thalamus in sensory gating during working memory.

Keywords: delay activity; simultaneous EEG-fMRI; source estimation; thalamus; working memory.

Grants and funding

R56 MH116007/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/United States