Robert M G Reinhart

Publications (2)13.66 Total impact

• Source

  Available from: Geoffrey F Woodman

  Article: High Stakes Trigger the Use of Multiple Memories to Enhance the Control of Attention.

  Robert M G Reinhart, Geoffrey F Woodman
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  ABSTRACT: We can more precisely tune attention to highly rewarding objects than other objects in our environment, but how our brains do this is unknown. After a few trials of searching for the same object, subjects' electrical brain activity indicated that they handed off the memory representations used to control attention from working memory to long-term memory. However, when a large reward was possible, the neural signature of working memory returned as subjects recruited working memory to supplement the cognitive control afforded by the representations accumulated in long-term memory. The amplitude of this neural signature of working memory predicted the magnitude of the subsequent behavioral reward-based attention effects across tasks and individuals, showing the ubiquity of this cognitive reaction to high-stakes situations.
  Cerebral Cortex 02/2013; · 6.54 Impact Factor
• Source

  Available from: Geoffrey F Woodman

  Article: Homologous mechanisms of visuospatial working memory maintenance in macaque and human: properties and sources.

  Robert M G Reinhart, Richard P Heitz, Braden A Purcell, Pauline K Weigand, Jeffrey D Schall, Geoffrey F Woodman
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  ABSTRACT: Although areas of frontal cortex are thought to be critical for maintaining information in visuospatial working memory, the event-related potential (ERP) index of maintenance is found over posterior cortex in humans. In the present study, we reconcile these seemingly contradictory findings. Here, we show that macaque monkeys and humans exhibit the same posterior ERP signature of working memory maintenance that predicts the precision of the memory-based behavioral responses. In addition, we show that the specific pattern of rhythmic oscillations in the alpha band, recently demonstrated to underlie the human visual working memory ERP component, is also present in monkeys. Next, we concurrently recorded intracranial local field potentials from two prefrontal and another frontal cortical area to determine their contribution to the surface potential indexing maintenance. The local fields in the two prefrontal areas, but not the cortex immediately posterior, exhibited amplitude modulations, timing, and relationships to behavior indicating that they contribute to the generation of the surface ERP component measured from the distal posterior electrodes. Rhythmic neural activity in the theta and gamma bands during maintenance provided converging support for the engagement of the same brain regions. These findings demonstrate that nonhuman primates have homologous electrophysiological signatures of visuospatial working memory to those of humans and that a distributed neural network, including frontal areas, underlies the posterior ERP index of visuospatial working memory maintenance.
  Journal of Neuroscience 05/2012; 32(22):7711-22. · 7.11 Impact Factor