Is conscious awareness needed for all working memory processes?

Stein and colleagues argue there is no yet conclusive evidence for nonconscious working memory (WM) and that is critical to probe WM while ensuring null sensitivity to memory cues. While this stringent approach reduces the likelihood of nonconscious signaling for WM, we discuss existing work meeting this null sensitivity criteria, and, related work on nonconscious cognition in keeping with WM/awareness dissociations on the basis of a functional operational definition of WM. Further, because it is likely that WM is a nonunitary functional construct and visual awareness a gradual phenomenon, we propose that delineating the neural mechanisms for distinct WM types across different levels of awareness may prove the most fruitful approach for understanding the interplay between WM and consciousness.

Parallel pipelined histogram architecture via C-slow retiming

A parallel pipelined array of cells suitable for realtime computation of histograms is proposed. The cell architecture builds on previous work to now allow operating on a stream of data at 1 pixel per clock cycle. This new cell is more suitable for interfacing to camera sensors or to microprocessors of 8-bit data buses which are common in consumer digital cameras. Arrays using the new proposed cells are obtained via C-slow retiming techniques and can be clocked at a 65% faster frequency than previous arrays. This achieves over 80% of the performance of two-pixel per clock cycle parallel pipelined arrays.