Your muscles and your eyes are physically 'holding' your memories, which means someone can tell what you're thinking even if you're standing perfectly still.
April 13, 2026
Original Paper
Flexible Working Memory in the Peripheral Nervous System
bioRxiv · 2025.09.26.678884
The Takeaway
We used to think memories were strictly locked inside the brain's internal circuitry. This study shows that our peripheral nerves in our limbs and eyes actually mirror the information we're trying to remember, effectively turning the entire body into a part of the brain's storage system.
From the abstract
Working memory (WM) representations that are distributed across the brain can be flexibly recruited to best guide behavior. For instance, information may be represented relatively more strongly in visual cortex when a WM task requires fine visual detail, or more strongly in motor cortex when a specific response can be prepared. If WM drives goal-oriented actions, we might also expect such task-dependent signals to propagate to the peripheral effectors that realize WM commands. Accordingly, oculo