Experience-driven reallocation of sensory and mnemonic representations during working memory

AO_SCPLOWBSTRACTC_SCPLOWMastering a perceptual skill requires maintaining high-fidelity information in the cortex to support task-relevant behavior. Yet it remains unclear how sensory and higher-order cortices jointly support this maintenance, and how experience reshapes their respective contributions. To address these questions, we trained participants on visual motion discrimination and measured sensory and mnemonic neural codes using a delayed discrimination paradigm. After learning, fMRI activation patterns in V1 exhibited enhanced sensory fidelity during the retention period, which predicted individual learning effect. In contrast, mnemonic information in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) decreased after learning. Moreover, learning aligned the temporal dynamics between the sensory and mnemonic representations in V1. These results suggest that perceptual learning reallocates mnemonic resources from higher-order parietal regions toward high-fidelity sensory maintenance in early visual cortex, thereby optimizing the cortical implementation of visual working memory.