The neural bases of haptic working memory

Abstract

When deciding which kiwi fruit or pear needs eating first or which drink has the right temperature to be consumed on a warm day, we are likely to explore and compare hardness or temperature using our hands. The process that enables us to keep the relevant information active for task performance over a short period of time is called 'working memory' (WM) [1]. WM allows us to hold stimulus characteristics on-line to guide behaviour in the absence of external cues or prompts [2]. Without active WM, initial oercepts decay quickly with different time constants for different input modalities (Box 1).