Ask anyone from an NFL quarterback scanning the field for open receivers, to an air traffic controller monitoring the positions of planes, to a mom watching her kids run around at the park: We depend on our brain to hold what we see in mind, even as we shift our gaze around and even temporarily look away. This capability of “visual working memory” feels effortless, but a new MIT study shows that the brain works hard to keep up. Whenever a key object shifts across our field of view — either because it moved or our eyes did — the brain immediately transfers a memory of it by re-encoding it among neurons in the opposite brain hemisphere.
The finding, published in Neuron by neuroscientists at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, explains via experiments in animals how we can keep continuous track of what’s important to us, even though our visual system’s basic wiring requires…
