"Did you just ask me what questions are coming up?" I chuckled, "When I think about it... hehe..." After ten minutes, I still couldn't come up with an answer. That might be due to your short-term memory—also known as working memory. Recently, researchers from the Key Laboratory of Primate Neurobiology at the Institute of Life Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai, published a study titled *"Medial prefrontal activity during delay period contributes to learning of a working memory task."* This research highlights the role of the medial prefrontal cortex during the delay phase of working memory, offering new insights into how we process and retain information.
Studies have shown that when scientists manipulate the activity of neurons in mice brains, it can impair their ability to complete new working memory tasks. However, if the mice are well-trained, their memory performance remains unaffected. Working memory is a limited-capacity system that temporarily holds and processes information, playing a key role in complex cognitive functions. It was once called short-term memory (STM), but in 1974, Baddeley and Hitch introduced the concept of working memory based on experiments involving obstacles, proposing a three-component model. This kind of memory helps us hold onto information for a short time, such as when solving math problems or following instructions.
A key feature of working memory is the "delay period," during which information is temporarily retained. Scientists have observed increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) during this phase, but its exact impact on working memory remained unclear.
To investigate further, researchers designed an experiment where mice had to complete a working memory task involving odor matching. They manipulated the mPFC's delay period activity and observed the results over several days. When the mice were first introduced to the task, they struggled when neural activity was suppressed. But after training, the same manipulation no longer affected their performance.
This finding suggests that the delay period activity in the medial prefrontal cortex is essential for retaining information during new working memory tasks. Earlier studies have also linked the prefrontal cortex, including the medial region, to social cognition, such as theory of mind, emotional processing, decision-making, and self-awareness. This study deepens our understanding of how this brain area supports cognitive functions, especially when we're learning and performing new tasks.
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