This work matters because the way the brain formats memories affects what people can do with what they know. If visual cortex creates “good enough” representations tailored to tasks, then abilities like quick decision making, skill learning, and inclusive design depend on those dynamic transforms. Thinking about memory as an adaptable workspace opens new possibilities for helping people with different needs—students, neurodiverse learners, or workers in visual fields—by aligning environments with how the brain naturally optimizes information.
I invite readers to explore the full article to see the evidence and experiments that reveal these shifts in neural coding. Understanding how sensory reformatting links perception to behavior sheds light on the hidden computations that support human potential, and suggests practical ways to design tasks and spaces that let those computations flourish.
A core function of visual working memory (WM) is to sustain mental representations of recent visual inputs, thereby bridging moments of experience. This is thought to occur in part by recruiting early ‘sensory’ cortical regions, via flexible fronto-parietal mechanisms. The nature of visual cortex activity during WM has been elusive, but new evidence suggests that early WM representations can transform from a sensory-like code into a format that is shaped by task context and optimized for behavior. Here, we review evidence for transformations in visual cortical WM coding, the various forms they take, and their functional importance. Visual cortex may be an active workspace during WM, where flexible and ‘good enough’ WM representations serve to interface with perception and action.