The article by Robert Desimone reviews the neural mechanisms involved in visual memory and their role in attention. It highlights three key neuronal effects in memory-demanding tasks: repetition suppression, enhancement, and delay activity. Repetition suppression involves the suppression of neuronal responses to repeated stimuli, while enhancement enhances responses to stimuli with learned behavioral relevance. Delay activity is observed when animals must hold specific information in memory for short periods. These effects are primarily found in the inferior temporal (IT) cortex, with repetition suppression being an intrinsic property and enhancement and delay activity potentially dependent on feedback from the prefrontal cortex. The article also discusses the role of prefrontal cortex in providing feedback to IT cortex, biasing responses towards stimuli held in short-term memory. The mechanisms described influence competitive interactions in the visual cortex, which are biased towards relevant or expected stimuli, leading to attentional selection. Visual search tasks are used to illustrate how these mechanisms contribute to attentional selection, showing that only cells representing the target stimulus remain active during the task. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of these memory mechanisms in both traditional memory tasks and attentional processes.The article by Robert Desimone reviews the neural mechanisms involved in visual memory and their role in attention. It highlights three key neuronal effects in memory-demanding tasks: repetition suppression, enhancement, and delay activity. Repetition suppression involves the suppression of neuronal responses to repeated stimuli, while enhancement enhances responses to stimuli with learned behavioral relevance. Delay activity is observed when animals must hold specific information in memory for short periods. These effects are primarily found in the inferior temporal (IT) cortex, with repetition suppression being an intrinsic property and enhancement and delay activity potentially dependent on feedback from the prefrontal cortex. The article also discusses the role of prefrontal cortex in providing feedback to IT cortex, biasing responses towards stimuli held in short-term memory. The mechanisms described influence competitive interactions in the visual cortex, which are biased towards relevant or expected stimuli, leading to attentional selection. Visual search tasks are used to illustrate how these mechanisms contribute to attentional selection, showing that only cells representing the target stimulus remain active during the task. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of these memory mechanisms in both traditional memory tasks and attentional processes.