thoughts of the day

Attention vs. working memory:
It seems like that working memory must to some extanct overlap with attention. Some literature treated "working memory" as attention, or part of attention, like Fuster. (Sara Schukert in her article on attention) also choose Fuster's stand point. It makes sense though, when a subject or animal is performing the so called "working memory" tasks, such as "delayed-response task", certain functioning of a focused attention to the stimuli. But can we say that they are equivalent things, two analogus processes in the brain?

Working memory in different representations:
In psychology and SLA research the notion of WM is related to phonological short-term memory. Miyaki and Friedman (1998) even relates the working memory capacity to one central component of language aptitude. In fact, some studies do show that such phonological short term memory has predicting power over individual's future grammar/vocabulary performance in SLA (Nick Ellis). In terms of neuroscience studies, the working memory task was broken down into very basic and simple processes or components, such as visual, spatial, and tactile memories, or guided hand/eye movements. Prefrontal cortex was thought to be the center for many of these working memory related tasks, planning and executive functions. But the picture seems to be more complicated than simply localizing the function of working memory in prefrontal cortex. Fuster does found so called "memory cells" in prefrontal cortex of monkeys, and Goldman-Rakic also found certain neurons in the same area sensitive to spatial memory. But this doesn't give us a conclusion of what's going on in the brain during these tasks. I'm leaning towards to a neural network that's not just confined in prefrontal area, but connects to other cortical and sub-cortical areas as well.