Cognitive Neuroscience: Getting a Grasp on Working Memory
- 14 March 1997
- journal article
- Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Science
- Vol. 275 (5306) , 1580
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.275.5306.1580
Abstract
Without it, you couldn't understand this sentence, add up a restaurant tab in your head, or even find your way home. The “it” is working memory, an erasable mental blackboard that allows you to hold briefly in your mind the information essential for comprehension, reasoning, and planning. Now, neurobiologists are beginning to identify the neural machinery underlying this critical ability. They have found that working memory relies on cooperation among scattered areas of the brain, with the prefrontal cortex apparently working as the orchestrator that coordinates the activity of these various regions.Keywords
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