{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,13]],"date-time":"2026-03-13T07:47:35Z","timestamp":1773388055540,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":48,"publisher":"MIT Press - Journals","issue":"9","content-domain":{"domain":["direct.mit.edu"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":[],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2017,9,1]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title>\n               <jats:p>Goal-directed behavior in a complex world requires the maintenance of goal-relevant information despite multiple sources of distraction. However, the brain mechanisms underlying distractor-resistant working or short-term memory (STM) are not fully understood. Although early single-unit recordings in monkeys and fMRI studies in humans pointed to an involvement of lateral prefrontal cortices, more recent studies highlighted the importance of posterior cortices for the active maintenance of visual information also in the presence of distraction. Here, we used a delayed match-to-sample task and multivariate searchlight analyses of fMRI data to investigate STM maintenance across three extended delay phases. Participants maintained two samples (either faces or houses) across an unfilled pre-distractor delay, a distractor-filled delay, and an unfilled post-distractor delay. STM contents (faces vs. houses) could be decoded above-chance in all three delay phases from occipital, temporal, and posterior parietal areas. Classifiers trained to distinguish face versus house maintenance successfully generalized from pre- to post-distractor delays and vice versa, but not to the distractor delay period. Furthermore, classifier performance in all delay phases was correlated with behavioral performance in house, but not face, trials. Our results demonstrate the involvement of distributed posterior, but not lateral prefrontal, cortices in active maintenance during and after distraction. They also show that the neural code underlying STM maintenance is transiently changed in the presence of distractors and reinstated after distraction. The correlation with behavior suggests that active STM maintenance is particularly relevant in house trials, whereas face trials might rely more strongly on contributions from long-term memory.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1162\/jocn_a_01141","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2017,4,21]],"date-time":"2017-04-21T14:52:00Z","timestamp":1492786320000},"page":"1547-1565","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1162\/mitpressjournals.corrections.policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":12,"title":["Distractor-resistant Short-Term Memory Is Supported by Transient Changes in Neural Stimulus Representations"],"prefix":"10.1162","volume":"29","author":[{"given":"Jan","family":"Derrfuss","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Radboud University Nijmegen"},{"name":"University of Nottingham"}]},{"given":"Matthias","family":"Ekman","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Radboud University Nijmegen"}]},{"given":"Michael","family":"Hanke","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Otto von Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany"},{"name":"Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences, Magdeburg, Germany"}]},{"given":"Marc","family":"Tittgemeyer","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research, Cologne, Germany"}]},{"given":"Christian J.","family":"Fiebach","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Radboud University Nijmegen"},{"name":"Goethe University Frankfurt"},{"name":"Center for Individual Development and Adaptive Education, Frankfurt am Main, Germany"}]}],"member":"281","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2017,9,1]]},"reference":[{"key":"2021073021110949900_R1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"381","DOI":"10.1007\/s12021-011-9109-y","article-title":"An open source multivariate framework for n-tissue segmentation with evaluation on public data","volume":"9","author":"Avants","year":"2011","journal-title":"Neuroinformatics"},{"key":"2021073021110949900_R2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"150","DOI":"10.1038\/nn.4174","article-title":"Decoding the content of visual short-term memory under distraction in occipital and parietal areas","volume":"19","author":"Bettencourt","year":"2016","journal-title":"Nature Neuroscience"},{"key":"2021073021110949900_R3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"508","DOI":"10.1016\/j.neuroimage.2010.07.044","article-title":"A Monte Carlo method for locally multivariate brain mapping","volume":"56","author":"Bj\u00f6rnsdotter","year":"2011","journal-title":"Neuroimage"},{"key":"2021073021110949900_R4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1061","DOI":"10.1007\/s00213-014-3741-9","article-title":"Dopaminergic modulation of distracter-resistance and prefrontal delay period signal","volume":"232","author":"Bloemendaal","year":"2015","journal-title":"Psychopharmacology"},{"key":"2021073021110949900_R5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"859","DOI":"10.1093\/cercor\/bhp150","article-title":"Mechanisms of working memory disruption by external interference","volume":"20","author":"Clapp","year":"2010","journal-title":"Cerebral Cortex"},{"key":"2021073021110949900_R6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"42","DOI":"10.20982\/tqmp.01.1.p042","article-title":"Confidence intervals in within-subject designs: A simpler solution to Loftus and Masson's method","volume":"1","author":"Cousineau","year":"2005","journal-title":"Tutorials in Quantitative Methods for Psychology"},{"key":"2021073021110949900_R7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"87","DOI":"10.1017\/S0140525X01003922","article-title":"The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage capacity","volume":"24","author":"Cowan","year":"2001","journal-title":"Behavioral and Brain Sciences"},{"key":"2021073021110949900_R8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"248","DOI":"10.1017\/S1355617706060322","article-title":"Is the prefrontal cortex necessary for delay task performance? 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