Selected Publications

Where possible, links lead to open-access PDFs of published papers, and pre-prints of in-progress works. If those are not available, the link refers to the journal site and a link to the preprint, which does not necessarily match the final, accepted version, is provided. If you have trouble accessing a copy of a paper, please contact PI Tommy Sprague.

Preprints (not yet peer-reviewed)

*Hallenbeck, G.E., *Tardiff, N., Sprague, T.C., and Curtis, C.E. (pp2024). Prioritizing working memory resources depends on prefrontal cortex. bioRxiv. (*equal contribution) [ preprint ]

*Li, H-H., *Sprague, T.C., Yoo, A.H., Ma, W.J., and Curtis, C.E. (pp2024). Neural mechanisms of resource allocation in working memory. bioRxiv. (*equal contribution) [ preprint ]

Thayer, D.D. and Sprague, T.C. (pp2023). Interactions between working memory and attention depend on remembered feature dimension. psyArXiv. [ preprint ]

Vu-Cheung, K., Ester, E.F., and Sprague, T.C. (pp2021). Spatial working memory representations in human cortex are robust to a task-irrelevant interrupting stimulus. bioRxiv. [ preprint ]

Publications (peer-reviewed)

Thayer, D.D. and Sprague, T.C. (2023). Feature-specific salience maps in human cortex. Journal of Neuroscience. [ preprint | journal page | data&code ]

Li, Y. and Sprague, T.C. (2023). Awareness of the relative quality of spatial working memory representations. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics. [ journal pagepreprint | data | code ]

Thayer, D.D., Miller, M., Giesbrecht, B., and Sprague, T.C. (2022). Learned feature regularities enable suppression of spatially overlapping stimuli. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics. [ journal pagepreprint | data & code ]

Lin, S., Sprague, T.C., and Singh, A.K. (2022). Mind reader: reconstructing complex images from brain activities. Proceedings of the 36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems. [ conference paper ].

Lin, S., Sprague, T.C., and Singh, A.K. (2022). Redundancy and dependency in brain activities. Shared Visual Representations in Human and Machine Intelligence (NeurIPS Workshop). [ conference paper ].

Yoo, A.H., Bolaños, A., Hallenbeck, G.E., Rahmati, M., Sprague, T.C., and Curtis, C.E. (2022). Behavioral prioritization enhances working memory precision and neural population gain. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. [ journal pagepreprint | data | code ]

*Li, H.-H., *Sprague, T.C., Yoo, A.H., +Ma, W.J., and +Curtis, C.E. (2021). Joint representation of working memory and uncertainty in human cortex. Neuron. (*equal contribution as lead authors; +equal contribution as senior authors) [ journal pagepreprint | data & code ]

*Hallenbeck, G.E., *Sprague, T.C., Rahmati, M., Sreenivasan, K.K., and Curtis, C.E. (2021). Working memory representations in visual cortex mediate distraction effects. Nature Communications. (*equal contribution) [ journal pagepreprint | data | code ]

Vo, V.A., Sutterer, D.W., Foster, J.J., Sprague, T.C., Awh, E., and Serences, J.T. (2021). Shared representational formats for information maintained in working memory and information retrieved from long-term memory. Cerebral Cortex. [ journal pagepreprint ]

Ester, E.F., Sprague, T.C., and Serences, J.T. (2020). Categorical biases in human occipitoparietal cortex. Journal of Neuroscience. [ journal pagepreprint | data & codecommentary

Sprague, T.C., Boynton, G.M., and Serences, J.T. (2019). Inverted encoding models estimate sensible channel responses for sensible models. Commentary on "Inverted Encoding Models Reconstruct an Arbitrary Model Response, not the Stimulus" by Gardner & Liu, 2019. eNeuro. [ journal pagepdf | simulation code

*Itthipuripat, S., *Vo, V.A., Sprague, T.C., and Serences, J.T. (2019). Value-driven attentional capture enhances distractor representations in early visual cortex. PLoS Biology (*equal contribution) [ journal page | data & code ]

*Itthipuripat, S., *Sprague, T.C., and Serences, J.T. (2019). Functional MRI and EEG index complementary attentional modulations. Journal of Neuroscience (*equal contribution) [ journal pagepreprint | data & code ]

*Henderson, M., *Vo, V.A., Chunharas, C., Sprague, T.C., and Serences, J.T. (2019). Multivariate analysis of BOLD activation patterns recovers graded depth representations in human visual and parietal cortex. (*equal contribution). eNeuro. [ journal site | data | code ]

Chunharas, C., Rademaker, R.L., Sprague, T.C., Brady, T.F., and Serences, J.T. (2019). Separating memoranda in depth increases visual working memory performance. Journal of Vision. [ journal page | data & code

Sprague, T.C., *Adam, K.C.S., *Foster, J.J., *Rahmati, M., *Sutterer, D.W., and *Vo, V.A. (2018). Inverted encoding models assay population-level stimulus representations, not single-unit neural tuning. Peer-reviewed commentary on “Inverted encoding models of human population response conflate noise and neural tuning width” by Liu, Cable & Gardner, 2018 (*equal contribution, listed alphabetically). eNeuro. [ pdf ]

Sprague, T.C., Itthipuripat, S., Vo, V.A., and Serences, J.T. (2018). Dissociable signatures of visual salience and behavioral relevance across attentional priority maps in human cortex. Journal of Neurophysiology. [ preprint | journal page | data | code

Vo, VA., Sprague, T.C., and Serences, J.T. (2017). Spatial tuning shifts increase the discriminability and fidelity of population codes in visual cortex. Journal of Neuroscience. [ pdf | data & code ]

Sprague, T.C., Ester, E.F., and Serences, J.T. (2016). Restoring latent visual working memory representations in human cortex. Neuron. [ pdf | data | code ]

*Ester, E.F., *Rademaker, R.L. and *Sprague, T.C. (2016). How do visual and parietal cortex contribute to visual short-term memory? Peer-reviewed commentary on “Decoding the content of visual short-term memory under distraction in occipital and parietal areas” by Bettencourt & Xu, 2016 (*equal contribution, listed alphabetically). eNeuro. [ pdf ]

Samaha, J., Sprague, T.C., and Postle, B.R. (2016). Decoding and reconstructing the focus of spatial attention from the topography of alpha-band oscillations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. [ journal site | pdf ]

Ester, E.F., Sprague, T.C., and Serences, J.T. (2015). Parietal and frontal cortex encode stimulus-specific mnemonic representations during visual working memory. Neuron. [ pdf ]

Sprague, T.C., Ester, E.F. and Serences, J.T. (2014). Reconstructions of information in visual spatial working memory degrade with memory load. Current Biology. [ pdf ]

Itthipuripat S., Garcia, J.O., Rungratsameetaweemana, N. Sprague, T.C., Serences, J.T. (2014). Changing the spatial scope of attention alters the pattern of neural gain in human cortex. Journal of Neuroscience. [ pdf ]

Sprague, T.C. and Serences, J.T. (2013). Attention modulates spatial priority maps in human occipital, parietal and frontal cortices. Nature Neuroscience. [ pdf | supplementary materials ]

Reviews / Book chapters

Curtis, C.E. and Sprague, T.C. (2021). Persistent activity during working memory from front to back. Frontiers in Neural Circuits. [ journal page ]

Sprague, T.C., Saproo, S. and Serences, J.T. (2015). Attention mitigates information loss in small- and large-scale neural codes. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. [ tutorials & sample data

Sprague, T.C. and Serences, J.T. (2015). Using human neuroimaging to examine top-down modulations of visual perception. An Introduction to Model-based Cognitive Neuroscience, eds. Birte Forstmann & E-J Wagenmakers.

Manuscripts in Progress

Sprague, T.C. and Curtis, C.E. (In preparation). Temporal dynamics of visual working memory representations across human cortex.