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

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

Christian Bick and Mikhail I. Rabinovich

Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 218101 – Published 19 November 2009

Abstract

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.”

Received 3 June 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.218101

Authors & Affiliations

Christian Bick^1,2,3,* and Mikhail I. Rabinovich^1,†

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

^*bick@nld.ds.mpg.de
^†mrabinovich@ucsd.edu

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Issue

Vol. 103, Iss. 21 — 20 November 2009

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