Dataset Information

Tactile perception and working memory in rats and humans.

ABSTRACT: Primates can store sensory stimulus parameters in working memory for subsequent manipulation, but until now, there has been no demonstration of this capacity in rodents. Here we report tactile working memory in rats. Each stimulus is a vibration, generated as a series of velocity values sampled from a normal distribution. To perform the task, the rat positions its whiskers to receive two such stimuli, "base" and "comparison," separated by a variable delay. It then judges which stimulus had greater velocity SD. In analogous experiments, humans compare two vibratory stimuli on the fingertip. We demonstrate that the ability of rats to hold base stimulus information (for up to 8 s) and their acuity in assessing stimulus differences overlap the performance demonstrated by humans. This experiment highlights the ability of rats to perceive the statistical structure of vibrations and reveals their previously unknown capacity to store sensory information in working memory.

SUBMITTER: Fassihi A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3926022 | biostudies-other | 2014 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Tactile perception and working memory in rats and humans.

Fassihi Arash A Akrami Athena A Esmaeili Vahid V Diamond Mathew E ME

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20140121 6

Primates can store sensory stimulus parameters in working memory for subsequent manipulation, but until now, there has been no demonstration of this capacity in rodents. Here we report tactile working memory in rats. Each stimulus is a vibration, generated as a series of velocity values sampled from a normal distribution. To perform the task, the rat positions its whiskers to receive two such stimuli, "base" and "comparison," separated by a variable delay. It then judges which stimulus had great ...[more]

PMID: 24449850

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Project description:Humans can quickly approximate how many objects are in a visual image, but no clear consensus has been achieved on the cognitive resources underlying this ability. Previous work has lent support to the notion that mechanisms which explicitly represent the locations of multiple objects in the visual scene within a mental map are critical for both visuo-spatial working memory and enumeration (at least for relatively small numbers of items). Regarding the cognitive underpinnings of large numerosity perception, an issue currently subject to much controversy is why numerosity estimates are often non-veridical (i.e., susceptible to biases from non-numerical quantities). Such biases have been found to be particularly pronounced in individuals with developmental dyscalculia (DD), a learning disability affecting the acquisition of arithmetic skills. Motivated by findings showing that DD individuals are also often impaired in visuo-spatial working memory, we hypothesized that resources supporting this type of working memory, which allow for the simultaneous identification of multiple objects, might also be critical for precise and unbiased perception of larger numerosities. We therefore tested whether loading working memory of healthy adult participants during discrimination of large numerosities would lead to increased interference from non-numerical quantities. Participants performed a numerosity discrimination task on multi-item arrays in which numerical and non-numerical stimulus dimensions varied congruently or incongruently relative to each other, either in isolation or in the context of a concurrent visuo-spatial or verbal working memory task. During performance of the visuo-spatial, but not verbal, working memory task, precision in numerosity discrimination decreased, participants' choices became strongly biased by item size, and the strength of this bias correlated with measures of arithmetical skills. Moreover, the interference between numerosity and working memory tasks was bidirectional, with number discrimination impacting visuo-spatial (but not verbal) performance. Overall, these results suggest that representing visual numerosity in a way that is unbiased by non-numerical quantities relies on processes which explicitly segregate/identify the locations of multiple objects that are shared with visuo-spatial (but not verbal) working memory. This shared resource may potentially be impaired in DD, explaining the observed co-occurrence of working memory and numerosity discrimination deficits in this clinical population.

Dataset Information

Tactile perception and working memory in rats and humans.

Publications

Tactile perception and working memory in rats and humans.

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