Temporal Dynamics of Multi-Item Working Memory Maintenance in Human Gaze Patterns and EEG

Miniature gaze patterns during a multi-item working memory delay in humans track the orientations of all three items throughout the entire delay, showing load and serial-position effects.

• Why it matters: Limited WM resources may require prioritizing items over time, but direct evidence for temporal fluctuations in how items are maintained has been limited.
• What they did: Participants maintained up to three object orientations in working memory while eye-tracking and EEG were recorded; EEG encoding was short-lived, while gaze patterns preserved item information across the full delay.
• The result: Eye movements showed no alternation between concurrently maintained items, and gaze-based WM encoding was not modulated by frontal theta activity, implying stable oculomotor signatures rather than rhythmic sampling.

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