Working memory gating across sensory modalities reveals modality-specific maintenance mechanisms

The flexible resolution of the conflict between updating and maintenance demands in working memory is thought to rely on a selective gating mechanism. While gating of visual information has been extensively studied, gating of multisensory information remains poorly understood. We addressed this gap by contrasting task performance and accompanying neuro-oscillatory modulations across a purely visual and two audiovisual variants of a working memory gating task. Task-dependent performance differences emerged specifically for gate closing. Across tasks, gate closing was consistently associated with alpha band activity modulations supporting the integration of task-relevant information and beta band activity modulations controlling the reconfiguration of the gate state, while theta band activity modulations were overall negligible. However, the functional localization and relative magnitude of these oscillatory modulations varied between tasks. Together, our findings suggest that working memory gating is not amodal, but that maintenance processes in particular are shaped by the sensory context.