Anticipating behaviour through working memory (BACN Early Career Prize Lecture 2023)
Tuesday, September 12, 2023
15:45 UTC
Dr. Freek van Ede
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
Recording
Open recording
Hosted by British Association for Cognitive Neuroscience BACN45 minutes
Abstract
Working memory is about the past but for the future. Adopting such a future-focused perspective shifts the narrative of working memory as a limited-capacity storage system to working memory as an anticipatory buffer that helps us prepare for potential and sequential upcoming behaviour. In my talk, I will present a series of our recent studies that have started to reveal emerging principles of a working memory that looks forward – highlighting, amongst others, how selective attention plays a vital role in prioritising internal contents for behaviour, and the bi-directional links between visual working memory and action. These studies show how studying the dynamics of working memory, selective attention, and action together paves way for an integrated understanding of how mind serves behaviour.
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