Dr. Mark D'Esposito

It's only as long as you're able to rehearse it, and then it disappears, whereas what we call long-term memory, if you're remembering what you had for breakfast or your vacation, this is information that gets consolidated and gets put into a

a more durable form that we call long-term memory.

And the interesting thing about memory is that these are separate systems.

Everything from working memory just doesn't pass into long-term memory.

They're two completely different systems and two completely different parts of the brain that seem to control it.

So working memory, the frontal cortex seems to be very important for working memory.

When we are holding information in line, the neurons, the brain cells in the frontal lobes

are active and they stay kind of active as long as we're holding on that information.

And they're more active when the information is relevant.

And if we we get distracted, they'll get less active.

So kind of the frontal lobes kind of track your

you know, track the memory that you're holding in mind.

Another important thing about the circuitry is that if we're holding in mind, say, digits, you know, the phone number, well, that information is in your back of the brain.

And so the frontal lobes is sort of keeping information in the back of the brain active because it's connected to the visual areas.

It's able to sort of keep that information active.

And so what we've learned is that there's not these buffers in the brain.

where if you're holding verbal information, it's in this little buffer, and if you're holding visual information, it's in another buffer.

The whole brain acts as a buffer, and the frontal lobe can call up any part of the brain and keep that part of the brain active as it's

as it's trying to hold this information in line.

So the mechanism for working memory is just this persistent neural activity within the frontal lobes.