Figure 5.

Degradation of spatial WM representations during neutral trials. A, During neutral trials, we observed a monotonic decrease in total location information during the delay period. Data have been pooled and averaged across stimulus locations (i.e., the locations of the blue and red discs) and are time locked to the offset of the sample display (0 ms). The pink bar at the top of the plot marks epochs where estimates of location information were reliably greater than 0 (false discovery rate-corrected, cluster-based permutation test; see Materials and Methods). B, We identified sources of information loss by computing and quantifying time-averaged, location-specific reconstructions during the first and second delay periods (see Quantifying sources of information loss and recovery, in Materials and Methods). C, Reconstruction amplitudes were reliably lower during the second delay period relative to the first delay period, suggesting that information loss reflects a gradual reduction in the overall strength of each spatial WM representation. For all plots, shaded regions and error bars show 95% within-participant confidence intervals.