When sensory information is no longer available, working memory (WM) allows us to use what we remember to guide upcoming actions. Here, we asked how the brain turns information held in WM into a prepared response, and how this process depends on attention, available actions, and task demands. In an EEG experiment, participants remembered two orientations and later reproduced them by rotating a visual probe with one hand. By providing advance information about the upcoming probe, we could test when participants prepared a response before they were required to act. We tracked this preparation through changes in 8-30 Hz EEG activity associated with the response hand. Our results show that action preparation can be initiated by the responses that are currently available at encoding: when only one hand could be used, participants began preparing that hand even before receiving an explicit cue. At the same time, simply holding information in WM was not sufficient to trigger response preparation. The relevant memory had to be in a prioritized (active) representational state. Changing the task demands did not remove this dependence on selective attention. Finally, advance knowledge about an upcoming response improved performance specifically for the item that was not currently prioritized (latent) and required less relocation of visual attention within WM. Together, these findings suggest that WM can support behavior by transforming remembered sensory information into an action plan. Once such a plan is prepared, later behavior may rely less on visually attending to and retrieving the original memory representation.

Cognitive neuroscientists have a societal obligation not only to generate knowledge, but to disseminate it and steward its responsible application. This seminar brings together two researchers whose work spans the arc from fundamental neuroscience to real-world implementation, addressing the successes and challenges of translating findings into practice. Katia Steinfeld (UniL) connects her research on how myopia shapes visual and multisensory development to Escolhares, the non-profit she founded that delivers eye care to over 4,000 children annually in underserved Brazilian communities. Meike Ramon (BFH) draws on two decades of research into the neural and cognitive mechanisms of face identity processing to trace her path from basic questions about how the brain recognizes faces to applied collaborations with the public sector—spanning clinical assessment, security and identity verification, and everyday trust and social interaction. Together, these talks offer complementary perspectives—one from an established research trajectory, one from an early-career scientist bridging lab and field—on what it takes to move cognitive neuroscience out of the laboratory and into domains such as education, public policy, and security. Both speakers reflect on balancing scientific rigor with real-world relevance, and on building the dialogue with policymakers and practitioners needed to responsibly translate research into societal impact.