Modeling Effects of Interrupting Parietal Cortex Neural Activity on Working Memory Limit

Visual working memory (WM) is the cognitive function that temporarily keeps sensory information online. There is a debate on WM's limited ability: holding a fixed small amount of items or a limited resource allocated to all items stored. The current study tries to solve the debate by model comparison, involving the Mixture Model, Variable Precision Model, and All-guessing models. Furthermore, though multiple subregions of the human brain cortex coordinate to support the WM functions, their distinct contributions are under debate. By comparing WM performance with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to temporarily disrupt the activity in the parietal cortex during the maintenance of WM, the current study also tests the role of the parietal cortex play in determining the WM limit.