Brain Activity Related to Working Memory for Temporal Order and Object information.

Brain Activity Related to Working Memory for Temporal Order and Object information.
Behav Brain Res. 2017 Jun 08;:
Authors: Roberts BM, Libby LA, Inhoff MC, Ranganath C
Abstract
Maintaining items in an appropriate sequence is important for many daily activities; however, remarkably little is known about the neural basis of human temporal working memory. Prior work suggests that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and medial temporal lobe (MTL), including the hippocampus, play a role in representing information about temporal order. The involvement of these areas in successful temporal working memory, however, is less clear. Additionally, it is unknown whether regions in the PFC and MTL support temporal working memory across different timescales, or at coarse or fine levels of temporal detail. To address these questions, participants were scanned while completing 3 working memory task conditions (Group, Position and Item) that were matched in terms of difficulty and the number of items to be actively maintained. Group and Position trials probed temporal working memory processes, requiring the maintenance of hierarchically organized coarse and fine temporal information, respectively. To isolate activation related to temporal working memory, Group and Position trials were contrasted against Item trials, which required detailed working memory maintenance of visual objects. Results revealed that working memory encoding and maintenance of temporal...

Source: Behavioural Brain Research - June 8, 2017 Category: Neurology Authors: Roberts BM, Libby LA, Inhoff MC, Ranganath C Tags: Behav Brain Res Source Type: research