Causes and consequences of limitations in visual working memory.
Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data
Narrative review synthesizing cognitive neuroscience theory without systematic review methodology.
PubMed 26773268 · doi:10.1111/nyas.12992
What was done
This narrative review synthesized recent conceptual and methodological developments regarding the nature, capacity limits, and neural architecture of visual working memory (WM).
What was found
The abstract reports no numerical data. It describes evidence favoring a flexible resource model over discrete item-capacity limits, where prioritizing certain items reduces recall precision for others. It identifies neural mechanisms involved in this architecture: alpha-band oscillations mediating selective inhibition, early visual cortex maintaining items in the focus of attention, the striatum controlling memory gating, and the hippocampus potentially supporting feature binding.
Why it matters
This work outlines a conceptual shift in cognitive neuroscience from rigid, prefrontal-centric storage slots to distributed, resource-based visual working memory allocation.
Limits
As a narrative review, the paper provides no empirical sample, quantitative effect sizes, systematic search strategy, or explicit study selection criteria in the abstract.
Cited by
- supports The quality and precision of information stored in working memory degrades as more items are added.