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Nature Neuroscience 11, 5–6 (1 January 2008) | doi:10.1038/nn0108-5
The bouncer in the brain
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Abstract
Efficiency variations in the filtering of relevant from irrelevant information could contribute to individual differences in working memory. A new functional imaging study suggests that the basal ganglia act as this filter because activity in this region before stimulus presentation was inversely correlated with unnecessary storage. Anyone who has ever fumbled to remember an unfamiliar phone number without the benefit of pen and paper knows that our capacity for holding information 'online' in a highly accessible state is strictly limited. This capacity is called working memory, and several decades of work suggests that its capacity is limited to about three or four items.
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