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APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 103 » Issue 21
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 218101 (2009) [4 pages]

Dynamical Origin of the Effective Storage Capacity in the Brain’s Working Memory

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Christian Bick1,2,3,* and Mikhail I. Rabinovich1,†
1BioCircuits Institute, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, California 92093-0402, USA
2Department of Mathematics, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, California 92093-0112, USA
3Network Dynamics Group, Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPIDS), 37073 Göttingen, Germany

Received 3 June 2009; published 19 November 2009

The capacity of working memory (WM), a short-term buffer for information in the brain, is limited. We suggest a model for sequential WM that is based upon winnerless competition amongst representations of available informational items. Analytical results for the underlying mathematical model relate WM capacity and relative lateral inhibition in the corresponding neural network. This implies an upper bound for WM capacity, which is, under reasonable neurobiological assumptions, close to the “magical number seven.”

© 2009 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.218101
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.218101
PACS:
87.18.Sn, 05.45.−a, 87.10.−e, 87.18.Hf

*bick@nld.ds.mpg.de

†mrabinovich@ucsd.edu

 
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