Working Memory Capacity: Limits on the Bandwidth of Cognition
By Earl K. Miller, Timothy J. Buschman. 2015
51 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Why can your brain store a lifetime of experiences but process only a few thoughts at once? In this article we discuss “cognitive capacity” (the number of items that can be held “in mind” simultaneously) and suggest that the limit is inherent to processing based on oscillatory brain rhythms, or “brain waves,” which may regulate neural communication. Neurons that “hum” together temporarily “wire” together, allowing the brain to form and re-form networks on the fly, which may explain a hallmark of intelligence and cognition: mental flexibility. But this comes at a cost; only a small number of thoughts can fit into each wave. This explains why you should never talk on a mobile phone when driving.
Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience
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In Cognitive Neuroscience
Citations in the corpus
- Learning Rapid-Temporal Adaptations (2017, background): “Neuroscientific evidence suggests that PFC uses incoming information to support task-specific temporal adaptation and planning [38, 35, 22, 5].”
- Rapid Adaptation with Conditionally Shifted Neurons (2017, background): “Neuroscientific evidence suggests that these areas use incoming information to support task-specific temporal adaptation and planning (Stokes et al., 2013; Siegel et al., 2015; Miller & Buschman, 2015; Brincat & Miller, 2016).”