Abstract
Human working memory is supported by a broadly distributed set of brain networks. Content-specific networks communicate with a domain-general, supramodal network that is recruited regardless of the type of content. Here, we contrasted visual and auditory working memory tasks to examine interactions between the supramodal network and two content-specific networks. Functional connectivity among visual-biased, auditory-biased, and supramodal working memory networks was assayed by collecting task and resting-state fMRI data from 24 human participants (age 18-43; 11 men and 13 women). At rest, as found previously, the supramodal network exhibited stronger functional connectivity with the visual-biased network than with the auditory-biased network. This asymmetry raises questions about how networks communicate to support robust performance across modalities. However, during auditory task performance, dynamic changes increased auditory network connectivity with supramodal and visual-biased frontal regions, while decreasing connectivity from posterior visual areas to supramodal and frontal visual regions. In contrast, the visual task produced weak changes. Across individuals, auditory working memory precision correlated with the strength of auditory network connectivity changes, while no such brain-behavior link was observed for visual working memory. These results demonstrate an asymmetry in working memory network organization and reveal that dynamic reorganization accompanies performance of working memory tasks.
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Data availability
ROI search spaces (freesurfer label files in fsaverage space) used in these analyses are available at https://github.com/fmri/Sensory_Networks_FC. Data used to generate all figures are available in the supplementary materials. Unprocessed task, resting state, and structural MRI data are publicly available on OpenNeuro at https://doi.org/10.18112/openneuro.ds007231.v1.0.5.
Code availability
Custom Matlab code used to produce this work can be found at https://github.com/fmri/Sensory_Networks_FC.
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Acknowledgements
This work is funded by National Science Foundation grant BCS-1829394 to D.C.S. This work involved the use of instrumentation supported by the NSF Major Research Instrumentation grant BCS-1625552. Data were analyzed on a high-performance computing cluster supported by the ONR grant N00014-17-1-2304. We thank Dr. David Beeler for assistance with data collection and for helpful discussions, Dr. Abigail Noyce for auditory stimuli, and Dr. Ryan Marshall, Dr. Stephanie McMains, and Shruthi Chakrapani for scanning assistance. We acknowledge the University of Minnesota Center for Magnetic Resonance Research for the use of the multiband-EPI pulse sequences.
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Thomas Possidente: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Methodology, Software, Validation, Visualization, Writing—original draft, review & editing, Vaibhav Tripathi: Conceptualization, Data curation, Investigation, Methodology, Software, Writing—review & editing, Joseph T. McGuire: Methodology, Writing—review & editing David Somers: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Supervision, Project administration, Writing—original draft, review & editing.
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Communications Biology thanks Scott Brincat, Clive H. Y. Wong and the other anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary handling editors: Jessica Peter and Benjamin Bessieres.
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Possidente, T., Tripathi, V., McGuire, J.T. et al. Interactions between sensory-biased and supramodal working memory networks in the human cerebral cortex. Commun Biol (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-026-09688-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-026-09688-7
