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Bilateral generic working memory circuit requires left-lateralized addition for verbal processing.

Manaan Kar Ray1, Clare E Mackay, Catherine J Harmer

  • 1Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Partnership National Health Service Trust, Warneford Hospital, Warneford Lane, Oxford OX3 7JX, UK. manaan.ray@psych.ox.ac.uk

Cerebral Cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)
|October 20, 2007
PubMed
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This study reveals that verbal working memory (WM) shows left-hemisphere specialization, unlike spatial WM, which utilizes a more general bilateral brain network. These findings suggest an evolutionary basis for distinct verbal and spatial processing in the human brain.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Neuroimaging
  • Human Brain Evolution

Background:

  • The Baddeley-Hitch model posits separable phonological and visuospatial working memory (WM) components.
  • A traditional hemispheric division (left for verbal, right for spatial WM) is challenged by a common bilateral frontoparietal network hypothesis.
  • Investigating a generic WM circuit with specialized additions for verbal and spatial tasks is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To test the hypothesis of a generic working memory (WM) circuit.
  • To investigate the recruitment of specialized regions for verbal and spatial processing within this circuit.
  • To identify hemispheric differences in brain activation for verbal versus spatial WM.

Main Methods:

  • Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was employed in 33 healthy participants.

Related Experiment Videos

  • A novel fMRI paradigm used identical stimuli to elicit activation in the WM circuit for both verbal and spatial information.
  • Analysis focused on detecting quantitative differences in brain activation between verbal and spatial WM tasks.

    • Main Results:

    • Left-lateralized quantitative differences were observed in the left frontal and temporal lobes, favoring verbal over spatial WM (verbal > spatial).
    • No significant brain regions showed greater activation for spatial WM compared to verbal WM (spatial > verbal).
    • A common bilateral frontoparietal network was implicated in both verbal and spatial WM processing.

    Conclusions:

    • Spatial working memory (WM) appears to rely on a generic, evolutionarily older bilateral frontoparietal network.
    • Verbal WM additionally recruits specialized left-lateralized frontal and temporal regions, likely for language processing.
    • These findings support an evolutionary model where language capabilities were built upon pre-existing spatial processing networks.