On the cellular mechanisms underlying working memory capacity in humans

The cellular processes underlying individual differences in the Working Memory Capacity (WMC) of humans are essentially unknown. Psychological experiments suggest that subjects with lower working memory capacity (LWMC), with respect to subjects with higher capacity (HWMC), take more time to recall items from a list because they search through a larger set of items and are much more susceptible to interference during retrieval. However, a more precise link between psychological experiments and cellular properties is lacking and very difficult to investigate experimentally. In this paper, we investigate the possible underlying mechanisms at the single neuron level by using a computational mod…