The Role of the Prefrontal Cortex in the Maintenance of Verbal Working Memory: An Event-Related fMRI Analysis

Nandakumar S Narayanan; Vivek Prabhakaran; Silvia A Bunge; Kalina Christoff; Eric M Fine; John D. E Gabrieli

doi:10.1037/0894-4105.19.2.223

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The Role of the Prefrontal Cortex in the Maintenance of Verbal Working Memory: An Event-Related fMRI Analysis

Journal article

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The Role of the Prefrontal Cortex in the Maintenance of Verbal Working Memory: An Event-Related fMRI Analysis

Nandakumar S Narayanan, Vivek Prabhakaran, Silvia A Bunge, Kalina Christoff, Eric M Fine and John D. E Gabrieli

Neuropsychology, Vol.19(2), pp.223-232

03/2005

DOI: 10.1037/0894-4105.19.2.223

PMID: 15769206

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Abstract

Neuroimaging studies have been inconclusive in characterizing the role of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) for maintaining increasingly larger amounts of information in working memory (WM). To address this question, the authors collected event-related functional MRI data while participants performed an item-recognition task in which the number of to-be-remembered letters was parametrically modulated. During maintenance of information in WM, the dorsolateral and the ventrolateral PFC exhibited linearly increasing activation in response to increasing WM load. Prefrontal regions could not be distinguished from one another on the basis of load sensitivity, but the dorsolateral PFC had stronger functional connectivity with the parietal and motor cortex than the ventrolateral PFC. These results suggest an increasingly important role for the PFC in actively maintaining information as the amount of that information increases.

Neuroimaging

fMRI

prefrontal cortex

retrieval

verbal working memory

parietal cortex

executive processing

encoding

maintenance

Details

Title: Subtitle: The Role of the Prefrontal Cortex in the Maintenance of Verbal Working Memory: An Event-Related fMRI Analysis
Creators: Nandakumar S Narayanan - Department of Psychology, Stanford University
Vivek Prabhakaran - Department of Psychology, Stanford University
Silvia A Bunge - Department of Psychology, Stanford University
Kalina Christoff - Department of Psychology, Stanford University
Eric M Fine - Department of Psychology, Stanford University
John D. E Gabrieli - Department of Psychology, Stanford University
Resource Type: Journal article
Publication Details: Neuropsychology, Vol.19(2), pp.223-232
DOI: 10.1037/0894-4105.19.2.223
PMID: 15769206
NLM abbreviation: Neuropsychology
ISSN: 0894-4105
eISSN: 1931-1559
Publisher: American Psychological Association
Language: English
Date published: 03/2005
Academic Unit: Neurology; Iowa Neuroscience Institute
Record Identifier: 9984020710802771

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