Luo, C.; Ester, E.

Working Memory (WM) enables flexible behavior by forming a temporal bridge between recent sensory events and possible actions. Through re-analysis of published human EEG studies, we show that successful WM-guided behaviors are accompanied by bidirectional cortical traveling waves linking sensory cortical areas implicated in WM storage with frontal cortical areas implicated in response selection and production. We identified a feedforward (occipital-to-frontal) theta wave that emerged shortly after a response probe and whose latency predicted intra- and inter-individual differences in response times, and a feedback (frontal-to-occipital) beta wave that emerged after response termination. Importantly, both waveforms were present only around the time of an overt motor response. When participants could select task-relevant WM content prepare but not execute a task-appropriate action, neither waveform was observed. Our observations suggest that cortical traveling waves play an important role in the generation and execution of WM-guided behaviors.