In a test of STM for the color of varying numbers of objects, PFC represented the passage of time across the delay period and the location of to-be-remembered stimuli, but not the colors themselves [17••] (cf [18••]). Consistent with these unit-level findings, MVPA of human fMRI of STM has shown PFC to encode such factors as stimulus category, attentional context, and match-nonmatch status of a trial (e.g., 10•, 19•• and 20••]). Thus, in addition to its well-established role in the top-down control of neural processing (e.g., 14• and 20••]), another function of PFC may be the processing of

information that, although not explicitly being tested, is nonetheless unfolding, and of possible relevance to the organism 17••, 21 and 22]. Patterns of localization find more can also reflect how the brain supports the strategic recoding of information from the format presented at study into one best suited for the impending memory-guided action. One study first presented subjects with a sample object, then, early in the delay, indicated whether memory for fine-grained perceptual details or for category membership would be tested. For the former, MVPA found evidence for delay-period stimulus representation in inferior occipitotemporal cortex, but not PFC; for the latter, the converse was true [19••]. Combining MVPA with univariate

and functional connectivity analyses has revealed a role for frontal cortex and intraparietal sulcus in implementing such strategic shifts of mental coding in visual STM [20••]. MVPA can also track the see more evolution of mental coding in the absence of instructions, demonstrating, for example, that the verbal recoding of visually

presented information also entails the recruitment of a semantic code [26]. Neural data also provide important constraints on models of capacity limitations of visual STM 27• and 28•]. One influential model holds inferior intraparietal sulcus to be important for individuating objects that are to be encoded into visual STM, whereas superior intraparietal sulcus and an area of lateral occipital cortex are responsible for identifying these objects [6]. Recently, however, although the univariate Phosphoprotein phosphatase analyses of data from a follow-up experiment [29••] did reproduce many of the findings from the earlier study, MVPA of the same data failed to support a model of segregated circuits performing these two operations. Instead, the study of Naughtin et al. [29••] produced two novel findings. First, the contrasts intended to operationalize individuation versus identification recruited primarily overlapping regions, thereby calling into question the dissociability of these two hypothesized mechanisms. Second, many regions outside of the intraparietal sulcus regions emphasized by [6] were also sensitive to these contrasts, suggesting that broadly distributed systems underlie the control of visual STM ( Box 2).