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Short-term and long-term verbal memory: a positron emission tomography study
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Short-term and long-term verbal memory: a positron emission tomography study

Nancy C Andreasen, Daniel S O’Leary, Stephan Arndt, Ted Cizadlo, Richard Hurtig, Karim Rezai, G Leonard Watkins, Laura L Boles Ponto and Richard D Hichwa
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS, Vol.92(11), pp.5111-5115
05/23/1995
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.92.11.5111
PMCID: PMC41858
PMID: 7761457
url
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.92.11.5111View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

Short-term and long-term retention of experimentally presented words were compared in a sample of 33 healthy normal volunteers by the [15O]H2O method with positron emission tomography (PET). The design included three conditions. For the long-term condition, subjects thoroughly studied 18 words 1 week before the PET study. For the short-term condition, subjects were shown another set of 18 words 60 sec before imaging, with instructions to remember them. For the baseline condition, subtracted from the two memory conditions, subjects read a third set of words that they had not previously seen in the experiment. Similar regions were activated in both short-term and long-term conditions: large right frontal areas, biparietal areas, and the left cerebellum. In addition, the short-term condition also activated a relatively large region in the left prefrontal region. These complex distributed circuits appear to represent the neural substrates for aspects of memory such as encoding, retrieval, and storage. They indicate that circuitry involved in episodic memory has much larger cortical and cerebellar components than has been emphasized in earlier lesion studies.

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