SCIENTIFIC HUB

Follow the evidence.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE · MED

Transsaccadic working memory in healthy ageing and neurodegenerative disease.

Elife · 2026-02-24

DOI: 10.7554/elife.109581PMID: 41733574

Open accessresearch-article; Journal ArticleOriginal source ↗

Research overview

The text below is the source article’s original abstract under a verified reuse license. cc by

The brain continuously integrates rapidly changing visual input across eye movements to maintain stable perception, yet the precise mechanisms underpinning dynamic working memory and how these break down in brain diseases remain unclear. We developed a novel eye-tracking paradigm and computational models to investigate how spatial and colour information are updated across saccades in the human brain. Our findings reveal that saccades selectively impair spatial but not colour memory. Computational modelling identified that spatial representations are maintained in a dual eye-centred frame of reference which is actively updated by a noisy memory of saccades but is vulnerable to interference. Using this model, we found that specific mechanistic failures in initial encoding and memory decay, rather than the saccadic updating process itself, account for spatial working memory deficits in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. These results provide a mechanistic understanding of how dynamic spatial memory operates in health and its disruption in neurodegenerative disorders.

Scientific assessment

01

Research question

Assess the question within the original study’s scope.

02

Methods & sample

Check the source article for study design and sample details.

03

Key findings

An editorially approved findings summary is not yet published for this record.

04

Limitations

Generalizability, bias and clinical meaning require separate assessment.

Methods, samples and clinical conclusions are not inferred from bibliographic metadata.