Nice review of past work on the neurobiology of working memory and capacity limits:

Constantinidis, Christos, and Torkel Klingberg. “The neuroscience of working memory capacity and training.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience (2016).

Although there is a caveat:  More recent work suggests that the substrate of working memory is *not* sustained spiking activity.  That is an artifact of cross-trial averaging.  “Delay activity” is more sparse and bursty on single trials.  This suggests a different memory substrate.

See:

Lunqvist, M., Rose, J., Herman, P, Brincat, S.L, Buschman, T.J., and Miller, E.K. (2016) Gamma and beta bursts underlie working memory.  Neuron, published online March 17, 2016. View PDF

Stokes, Mark G. “‘Activity-silent’working memory in prefrontal cortex: a dynamic coding framework.” Trends in cognitive sciences 19.7 (2015): 394-405.

About the Author


The Miller Lab uses experimental and theoretical approaches to study the neural basis of the high-level cognitive functions that underlie complex goal-directed behavior. ekmillerlab.mit.edu