The neural mechanisms of multiple-item working memory are not well understood. In the current study, we address two competing hypotheses about the neural basis of sequential working memory: neural subspaces versus neural sequences. Using broadband MEG data from human participants, we applied dimensionality reduction and multivariate decoding techniques to test whether a sequence of items is maintained through the reactivation of individual items in sequence (neural sequences) or by organizing them into distinct low-dimensional subspaces (neural subspaces).
Our results revealed behaviorally relevant, low-dimensional neural subspaces that organized memory representations according to ordinal position in the sequence, supporting the neural subspaces hypothesis. In contrast, we found no evidence of sequential neural replay during the retention period, contrary to the neural sequences hypothesis. In this work, we show that sequential working memory is maintained through structured geometric organization in low-dimensional representational space, rather than through the sequential reactivation of individual items, thus clarifying the mechanisms of multi-item working memory.
This research was conducted using resources provided by the High-Performance Computing Cluster and the Core Technology Platform at NYUAD. This work was supported by the NYU Research Enhancement Fund and the NYUAD Center for Brain and Health, funded by Tamkeen under NYUAD Research Institute grant CG012 (KS). Division of Science and Mathematics, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Aniol Santo-Angles, Jiarui Yang, Ying Zhou, Wing Kwan Hannah Chu & Kartik K.
Sreenivasan Neuroscience Center, Helsinki Institute of Life Science HiLIFE, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland Department of Psychology and Center for Data Science, New York University, New York, NY, USA Center for Brain and Health, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.
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Santo-Angles, A., Yang, J., Zhou, Y. et al. Neural subspaces encode sequential working memory without detectable neural sequences. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-78895-x DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-78895-x
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