Anticipating and guiding behaviour through working memory

When driving by a road sign with directions, one must keep its content ‘in mind’ (in working memory) in order to take the correct exit moments later. As this simple example illustrates, working memory is about the past but for the future.

Taking an action-oriented perspective on cognitive functioning as a starting point, we investigate how we use working memory to anticipate and prepare for upcoming behaviour. We move beyond the (often implicit) perspective on working memory as a function whose primary purpose is to “represent" or "store" the past, and instead work from the perspective of working memory that equips us to optimally “prepare” for the future. Seen this way, working memory primarily serves to expand the flexibility of our behavioural repertoire by buffering potentially relevant past sensations to carry these forward to potential future courses of action – enabling effective behaviour in a dynamic world.

Representative publications

• Turning attention inside out: how working memory serves behavior [link]

• Visual working memory and action: functional links and bi-directional influences [link]
• Jointly looking to the past and the future in visual working memory [link]
• Concurrent visual and motor selection during visual working memory guided action [link]
• Output planning at the input stage in visual working memory [link]

• Memory load influences our preparedness to act on visual representations in working memory without affecting their accessibility [link]

• Looking ahead in working memory to guide sequential behaviour [link]
• Temporal expectations guide dynamic prioritization in visual working memory through attenuated alpha oscillations [link]
• Planning the potential future during multi-item visual working memory [link]

Tracking internal working-memory processes through micro eye movements

The brain is situated in a body that is geared for (and evolved during) interaction with the world around us. It is for this reason that cognitive processes – even those directed at internal representations – often leave ‘peripheral fingerprints’. These fingerprints, in turn, can be utilised to track cognitive processes and the associated neural machinery that support them.

One example of this in our work regards our finding that the selection and rehearsal of internal representations in working memory can be "read out" from spatial biases very small eye movements known as microsaccades. This does not only uncover how the brain’s system that controls eye movements also participates in where we "look" in the mind, but also opens a powerful approach for accessing internal working-memory processes through the eyes.

Representative publications

• Human gaze tracks attentional focusing in memorized visual space [link]

• Microsaccades track location-based object rehearsal in visual working memory [link]

• Heading direction tracks internally directed selective attention in visual working memory [link]

• Brain leakage exposes covert cognitive computations in bodily movements [link]

• Concurrent selection of internal goals and external sensations during visual search [link]

• Looking into working memory to verify potential targets during search [link]

• Looking ahead in working memory to guide sequential behaviour [link]
• Goal-directed and stimulus-driven selection of internal representations [link]
• Multiple spatial frames for immersive working memory [link]

• Re-focusing visual working memory during expected and unexpected memory tests [link]

• Functional but not obligatory link between microsaccades and neural modulation by covert spatial attention [link]

Dynamic nature of cognition

The world in which we live is ever in flux, and so are – and must be – the cognitive processes that support adaptive behaviour. Accordingly, to understand how cognition serves behaviour, time is of the essence – from safely maneuvering your bike during rush-hour in Amsterdam, to playing a game of sports.

The aim to understand the dynamic nature of everyday cognition is an important drive when we develop our experimental tasks, decide on our measurement methods, and analyse our experimental results. Anticipation, like any cognitive function, unfolds in time, and capitalises on temporal structure in the world to be ready at the right time – to perceive, act, or to prioritise internal memory representation for upcoming (potential) behaviour. Likewise, working memory is often called upon because we ourselves are in motion (e.g., turning around in a game of sports and memorising fellow players) or because the objects of interest themselves move out of view or become occluded (e.g., a bird flying behind a building). 

Representative publications

• Anticipated moments: temporal structure in attention [link]

• Attention in flux [link]

• Shielding working-memory representations from temporally predictable external interference [link]
• Decoding the influence of anticipatory states on visual perception in the presence of temporal distractors [link]
• Purpose-dependent consequences of temporal expectations serving perception and action [link]
• Temporal expectations guide dynamic prioritization in visual working memory through attenuated alpha oscillations [link]
• Multiple spatial frames for immersive working memory [link]

Function and properties of frequency-specific brain activity

In our research, we often use frequency-specific patterns of brain activity – typically measured using scalp electroencephalography (EEG) – to reveal and track the dynamic sensory, motor, and cognitive computations in the human brain. But what is the nature of these spectral "neural signatures" cognitive processes themselves? What functional roles do they play exactly? And what is the relation between these neural signatures and spatial biases in micro eye-movements? These are also lines of research that we actively pursue.

Representative publications

• Neural oscillations: sustained rhythms or transient burst-events? [link]
• Mnemonic and attentional roles for states of attenuated alpha oscillations in perceptual working memory: a review [link]
• Functional but not obligatory link between microsaccades and neural modulation by covert spatial attention [link]

• Microsaccades transiently lateralise EEG alpha activity [link]

• Supramodal theta, gamma, and sustained fields predict modality-specific modulations of alpha and beta oscillations during visual and tactile working memory [link]
• Diverse phase relations among neuronal rhythms and their potential function [link]
• Attentional modulations of somatosensory alpha, beta and gamma oscillations dissociate between anticipation and stimulus processing [link]

Translating our research to clinical conditions, development, and ageing

We focus on fundamental questions regarding the nature, function, and (neural) mechanisms of the foundational cognitive constructs of working memory, selective attention, timing, decision making, vision, and action. Where possible – and typically in collaboration – we keep an eye on opportunities to ‘apply’ the insights we gain to better understand the preservation/deterioration of cognitive and neural function across various clinical populations, as well as in development and in ageing (and we generally welcome new collaborations with clinicians and lifespan researchers).

Representative publications

• Dissecting beta-state changes during timed movement preparation in Parkinson’s disease [link]
• Reduced cortico-muscular beta coupling in Parkinsons disease predicts motor impairment [link]
• Theta oscillations in 4-year-olds are sensitive to task engagement and task demands [link]
• Anticipatory neural dynamics of spatial-temporal orienting of attention in younger and older adults [link]
• Impaired corticomuscular and interhemispheric cortical beta oscillation coupling in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis [link]

Contributions to the broader scientific enterprise

We look beyond our immediate focus on the proactive nature of cognition and brain function, and participate in the broader scientific enterprise – ranging from reviewing the history of our research field to delineating key elements of a supportive lab environment to proposing suitable nomenclature to contributing to the wider reproducibility debate. A selection of such broader outputs below. 

Representative outputs

• Under the mind’s hood: what we have learned by watching the brain at work [link]
• Physiological plausibility can increase reproducibility in cognitive neuroscience [link]

• 10 simple rules for a supportive lab environment [link]

• Disambiguating dimensions of internal and external brain processes [link]
• Behind the paper post: Mental states inside out: subtle eye movements reveal the 'spotlight' within our inner mind [link]

The European Research Council through the ERC Starting Grant MEMTICIPATION, "Preparing memories for action: how visual working memories are sculpted by their anticipated use", awarded to Freek van Ede. This project runs from September 2020 to March 2026.