Open AccessWhat have Klingon letters and faces in common? An fMRI study on content‐specific working memory systems
Author(s) -
Mecklinger A.,
Bosch V.,
Gruenewald C.,
Bentin S.,
von Cramon D.Y.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
human brain mapping
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.005
H-Index - 191
eISSN - 1097-0193
pISSN - 1065-9471
DOI - 10.1002/1097-0193(200011)11:3<146::aid-hbm20>3.0.co;2-d
Subject(s) - intraparietal sulcus , working memory , psychology , premotor cortex , prefrontal cortex , cognitive psychology , posterior parietal cortex , neuroscience , sma* , superior parietal lobule , functional magnetic resonance imaging , cognition , computer science , medicine , dorsum , algorithm , anatomy
Neuroimaging studies show that prefrontal, premotor, and parietal cortical regions are part of a working memory network that supports the active retention of information. In two experiments we used fMRI to examine whether prefrontal and posterior cortical areas are organized in a content‐specific way for object and spatial working memory. Subjects performed a delayed matching‐to‐sample task modified to allow the examination of content‐specific retention processes, independent of perceptual and decision‐related processes. In Experiment 1, either unfamiliar geometrical objects (Klingon letters from an artificial alphabet unknown to the participants) or their spatial locations had to be memorized, whereas in Experiment 2, either unfamiliar faces or biological objects (butterflies) were actively memorized. All tasks activated a similar cortical network including posterior parietal (banks of the intraparietal sulcus), premotor (banks of the inferior precentral sulcus) and prefrontal regions (banks of the inferior frontal sulcus), and the presupplementary motor area (pre‐SMA). For geometrical objects and faces for which strategic semantic processing can be assumed, this activation was larger in the left than in the right hemisphere, whereas a bilateral or right dominant distribution was obtained for butterflies and spatial locations. The present results do not support the process‐specific or content‐specific view of the role of the prefrontal cortex in working memory task. Rather, they suggest that the inferior prefrontal cortex houses nonmemonic strategic processing systems required for response selection and task management that can flexibly be used across a variety of tasks and informational domains. Hum. Brain Mapping 11:146–161, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.