Not “just” a coincidence: Frontal‐striatal interactions in working memory and interval timing

Abstract

The frontal cortex and basal ganglia play central roles in working memory and in the ability to time brief intervals. We outline recent theoretical and empirical work to suggest that working memory and interval timing rely not only on the same anatomic structures, but also on the same neural representation of a specific stimulus. Specifically, cortical neurons may fire in an oscillatory fashion to form representations of stimuli, and the striatum (a basal ganglia structure) may detect those patterns of cortical firing that occur co‐incident to important events. Information about stimulus identity can be extracted from which cortical neurons are involved in the representation, and information about duration can be extracted from their relative phase. The principles derived from these biologically based models also fit well with a family of behaviourally based models that emphasise the importance of time in many working memory phenomena.

Notes

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Cindy Lustig, Psychology, 1012 East Hall, University of Michigan, 525 East University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA. Email: [email protected]

Cindy Lustig is supported by NIA training grant AG00030 and a grant from the Alzheimer's Association (IIRG‐00‐1944) to Randy L. Buckner. Matthew S. Matell is supported by a NRSA post‐doctoral fellowship from NIA. Warren H. Meck is supported by a James McKeen Catell award and grant MH54799 from NIMH.

An initial report of this work was presented at the Quebec '02 Conference on Short‐term/Working Memory, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, July 18–21, 2002.

The authors are grateful to Claudette Fortin for the opportunity to participate in this conference and to Gordon Brown for encouragement of this theoretical perspective.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Warren H. Meck

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Cindy Lustig, Psychology, 1012 East Hall, University of Michigan, 525 East University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA. Email: [email protected] Cindy Lustig is supported by NIA training grant AG00030 and a grant from the Alzheimer's Association (IIRG‐00‐1944) to Randy L. Buckner. Matthew S. Matell is supported by a NRSA post‐doctoral fellowship from NIA. Warren H. Meck is supported by a James McKeen Catell award and grant MH54799 from NIMH. An initial report of this work was presented at the Quebec '02 Conference on Short‐term/Working Memory, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, July 18–21, 2002. The authors are grateful to Claudette Fortin for the opportunity to participate in this conference and to Gordon Brown for encouragement of this theoretical perspective.