ABSTRACT
In the anterior inferior temporal cortex, memory is reflected in modulations of neuronal responses to current stimuli. New or not-recently-seen stimuli cause the greatest activation of cells that exhibit suppressive effects. The output of these cells may drive attentional and orienting systems, resulting in a tendency for novel stimuli to “grab” our attention. By contrast, mnemonic enhancement occurs when a current stimulus matches an item held in working memory. In this case, feedback from prefrontal neurons, whose activity underlies the maintenance of an item in working memory, potentiates the responses of mnemonic enhancement cells to the expected stimulus. This mechanism is likely to contribute to visual search, where the representation of a target item in working memory is used to guide the search of a cluttered scene for the target.
