The Importance of Single-Trial Analyses in Cognitive Neuroscience

Theories of working memory typically assume that information is maintained via persistent neural activity. By contrast, Lundqvist et al. report that single-trial delay activity is actually ‘bursty’; the classic profile of persistent activity is an artefact of trial-wise averaging. Tackling brain–behaviour relationships at the single-trial level is an important future direction for cognitive neuroscience.