Evaluation of Brain Electrical Activity of Visual Working Memory with Time-Frequency Analysis

The term visual working memory (VWM) refers to the temporary storage of visual information. In electrophysiological recordings during the change detection task which relates to VWM, contralateral negative slow activity was detected. It was found to occur during the information is kept in memory and it was called contralateral delay activity. In this study, the characteristics of electroencephalogram frequencies of the contralateral and ipsilateral responses in the retention phase of VWM were evaluated by using time-frequency analysis (discrete wavelet transform [DWT]) in the change detection task. Twenty-six volunteers participated in the study. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were examined, and then a time-frequency analysis was performed. A statistically significant difference between contralateral and ipsilateral responses was found in the ERP. DWT showed a statistically significant difference between contralateral and ipsilateral responses in the delta and theta frequency bands range. When volunteers were grouped as either high or low VWM capacity the time-frequency analysis between these groups revealed that high memory capacity groups have a significantly higher negative coefficient in alpha and beta frequency bands. This study showed that during the retention phase delta and theta bands may relate to visual memory retention and alpha and beta bands may reflect individual memory capacity.