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Parallel Processing of Spatial and Serial Order Information Before Moving to a Remembered Target

¹Cognition and Action Group, Department of Neurology and ²Department of Psychiatry, National University of Athens, Eginition Hospital, Athens, Greece; ³Department of Cognitive Sciences, Università Vita e Salute San Raffaele, Milano, Italy; and ⁴Department of Radiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri

Submitted 17 September 2004; accepted in final form 22 December 2004

Information storage and retrieval from working memory is limited by the capacity of storage mechanisms and attentional processes. Nevertheless, it has been shown that processing of multiple features can proceed independently in working memory. In this study we investigated how serial order and directional information are processed when executing a movement to a remembered target direction. We compared the performance of 11 healthy subjects in 3 motor working memory tasks, one with a varying spatial memory load, one with a varying serial order memory load, and one in which memory load was varied for both features. We found that the spatial information memory load does not affect the ability to store information about serial order and vice versa. Furthermore, movement response latencies indicated that retrieval of information about both features proceeds simultaneously. These results strongly favor independent, parallel working memory systems for processing space and order information in the motor system.