Dorsolateral prefrontal contributions to human working memory

Although neuroscience has made remarkable progress in understanding the involvement of prefrontal cortex (PFC) in human memory, the necessity of dorsolateral PFC (dlPFC) for key competencies of working memory remains largely unexplored. We therefore studied human brain lesion patients to determine w...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cortex 2013-05, Vol.49 (5), p.1195-1205
Main Authors: Barbey, Aron K., Koenigs, Michael, Grafman, Jordan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult and adolescent clinical studies
Aged
Biological and medical sciences
Brain Mapping - methods
Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
Female
Functional Laterality - physiology
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Humans
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted - methods
Intelligence Tests
Learning. Memory
Lesion data
Male
Medical sciences
Memory
Memory, Short-Term - physiology
Middle Aged
Neuropsychological Tests
Organic mental disorders. Neuropsychology
Prefrontal cortex
Prefrontal Cortex - physiology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation - methods
Working memory
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Although neuroscience has made remarkable progress in understanding the involvement of prefrontal cortex (PFC) in human memory, the necessity of dorsolateral PFC (dlPFC) for key competencies of working memory remains largely unexplored. We therefore studied human brain lesion patients to determine whether dlPFC is necessary for working memory function, administering subtests of the Wechsler Memory Scale, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, and the N-Back Task to three participant groups: dlPFC lesions (n = 19), non-dlPFC lesions (n = 152), and no brain lesions (n = 54). DlPFC damage was associated with deficits in the manipulation of verbal and spatial knowledge, with left dlPFC necessary for manipulating information in working memory and right dlPFC critical for manipulating information in a broader range of reasoning contexts. Our findings elucidate the architecture of working memory, providing key neuropsychological evidence for the necessity of dlPFC in the manipulation of verbal and spatial knowledge.
ISSN:0010-9452
1973-8102
DOI:10.1016/j.cortex.2012.05.022