Visuospatial working memory (WM) requires the activity of a spread network, including right parietal regions, to sustain storage capacity, attentional deployment, and active manipulation of information. Notably, while the electrophysiological correlates of such regions have been explored using many different indices, evidence for a functional involvement of the individual frequency peaks in the alpha (IAF) and theta bands (ITF) is still poor despite their relevance in many influential theories regarding WM. Interestingly, there is also a parallel lack of literature about the effect of short-term practice on WM performance. Here, we aim to clarify whether the simple repetition of a change-detection task might be beneficial to WM performance and to which degree these effects could be predicted by IAF and ITF. For this purpose, 25 healthy participants performed a change-detection task at baseline and in a retest session, while IAF and ITF were also measured. Results show that task repetition improves WM performance. In addition, right parietal IAF, but not ITF, accounts for performance gain such that faster IAF predicts higher performance gain. Our findings align with recent literature suggesting that the faster the posterior alpha, the finer the perceptual sampling rate, and the higher the WM performance gain.

There is broad consensus supporting the reciprocal influence of working memory (WM) and attention. Top-down mechanisms operate to cope with either environmental or internal demands. In that sense, it is possible to select an item within the contents of WM to endow it with prioritized access. Although evidence supports that maintaining an item in this privileged state does not rely on sustained visual attention, it is unknown whether selection within WM depends on perceptual attention. To answer this question, we recorded electrophysiological neural activity while participants performed a retro-cue task in which we inserted a detection task in the delay period after retro-cue presentation. Critically, the onset of to-be-detected near threshold stimuli was unpredictable, and thus, sustained perceptual spatial attention was needed to accomplish the detection task from the offset of the retro-cue. At a behavioral level, we found decreased visual detection when a WM representation was retro-cued. At a neural level, alpha oscillatory activity confirmed a spatial shift of attention to the retro-cued representation. We interpret the convergence of neural oscillations and behavioral data to point towards the theory that selection within WM could be accomplished through a perceptual attentional mechanism.

Pattern separation is considered a crucial process that allows us to distinguish among the highly similar and overlapping experiences that constitute our episodic memory. Not only do different episodes share common features, but it is often the case that they share the context in which they occurred. While there have been a great number of studies investigating pattern separation and its behavioral counterpart, a process known as mnemonic discrimination, surprisingly, research exploring the influence of context on pattern separation or mnemonic discrimination has been less common. The available evidence shows that similar items with similar contexts led to a failure in pattern separation due to high similarity that triggers overlap between events. On the other hand, others have shown that pattern separation can take place even under these conditions, allowing humans to distinguish between events with similar items and contexts, as different hippocampal subfields would play complementary roles in enabling both pattern separation and pattern completion. In the present study, we were interested in testing how stability in context influenced pattern separation. Despite the fact that pattern separation is by definition an encoding computation, the existing literature has focused on the retrieval phase. Here, we used a subsequent memory paradigm in which we manipulated the similarity of context during the encoding of visual objects selected from diverse categories. Thus, we manipulated the encoded context of each object category (four items within a category), so that some categories had the same context and others had a different context. This approach allowed us to test not only the items presented but also to include the conditions that entail the greatest demand on pattern separation. After a 20 min period, participants performed a visual mnemonic discrimination task in which they had to differentiate between old, similar, and new items by providing one of the three options for each tested item. Similarly to previous studies, we found no interaction between judgments and contexts, and participants were able to discriminate between old and lure items at the behavioral level in both conditions. Moreover, when averaging the ERPs of all the items presented within a category, a significant SME emerged between hits and new misses, but not between hits and old false alarms or similar false alarms. These results suggest that item recognition emerges from the interaction with subsequently encoded information, and not just between item memory strength and retrieval processes.

Childhood and adolescence are critical periods for the development of Executive Functions (EF), which underpin self-control, planning, and social adaptation, and are often compromised in children growing up in psychosocially vulnerable contexts. This study examined the effects of STap2Go, a fully digital, strategy-based EF training, on EF performance and self-perceived maladjustment in 36 at-risk children and adolescents compared with 32 controls. Participants completed pre- and post-intervention assessments using the Neuropsychological Assessment Battery of Executive Functions (BANFE-3) and the Multifactorial Self-Evaluative Test for Child Adaptation (TAMAI). Results showed a significant effect of training on global EF and on General Maladjustment, with improvements only in the intervention group. These findings support the inclusion of scalable, avatar-guided EF stimulation programs such as STap2Go within social inclusion pathways for youth in vulnerable situations.