Working memory is a short form of memory where information from a recent experience must be used to perform the appropriate response on a following trial or task. Working memory is a form of memory that is known to primarily require the functional activity of the prefrontal cortex [see Ref. (231) for review of human beings working memory and see Ref. (232) for a review of the cellular mechanisms of working memory], differentiating it from other forms of memory discussed in Section “Learning and Memory.” Behavioral tasks that evaluate working memory include delayed matching to sample tasks where a stimulus is provided, followed by a delay then a choice between multiple different stimuli. In these experiments, the organism must remember the initial stimulus then pick the matching stimulus when given a choice after the delay, and is readily adapted for rodent, non-human primates, and human beings. For rodents, the task can be modified to a delayed matching-to-place task in a Morris water maze (MWM), where a platform is located in an arm during a search trial, then after a delay
