Figure 1.

Space and time in short term memory.

Features encoded separately must be brought together into objects, in order to support cued recall. This binding could rely on several mechanisms. Both space and time can be considered as independent universal contexts for binding features together. Left:(a) Features could be bound by pairing each feature with a particular location in space. (b) Alternatively, pairs of objects might be connected by configural information, with locations encoded primarily in terms of spatial directions. In this case, an object’s location is stored in terms of its direction relative to other objects in memory. Right: Features can be grouped in terms of their co-occurrence in time. (c) A simple model of temporal ordering links each object representation to its successor. (d) Alternatively, events might be attached to a time-specific code, in which distinct representational units are active at different moments in time. (e) Recent models of temporal binding postulate a high-dimensional time code composed of multiple time-varying traces which, together, indicate the time an event occurs. Bottom:(f) Time and space could also be considered as features in their own right. In this scenario, time and place are on equal terms with other features of the object.