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Higher Cognitive Reserve Is Associated with Better Working Memory Performance and Working-Memory-Related P300
Gabriela Gutiérrez-Zamora Velasco1, Thalía Fernández2, Juan Silva-Pereyra3
1Doctorado en Investigaciones Cerebrales, Centro de Investigaciones Cerebrales, Universidad Veracruzana, Xalapa 91190, Mexico.
Brain Sciences
|April 3, 2021
Summary
Higher reading skills enhance working memory (WM) performance and neural efficiency. Individuals with strong reading abilities showed better accuracy and reduced brain activity modulation during a WM task.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Psycholinguistics
Background:
- Cognitive reserve, influenced by factors like reading skill, may impact cognitive functions.
- Working memory (WM) is crucial for complex cognitive tasks.
- Neural efficiency refers to the brain's ability to perform tasks with minimal activation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how reading syntactic skill, as a proxy for cognitive reserve, affects working memory performance and neural activity.
- To compare high reading performance (HRP) and low reading performance (LRP) groups on a working memory task.
- To analyze the P300 event-related potential component in relation to working memory load and reading skill.
Main Methods:
- Clustering participants into high and low reading skill groups.
- Administering a two-load-level (high vs. low) working memory Sternberg task.
- Recording P300 event-related potentials during task performance.
Main Results:
- The HRP group exhibited superior accuracy on negative probes compared to the LRP group.
- Both groups demonstrated P300 amplitude modulation, with larger amplitudes for low WM load.
- The HRP group showed smaller WM-related P300 amplitude modulations on negative probes than the LRP group.
Conclusions:
- Elevated reading skill is linked to enhanced neural efficiency in working memory.
- Reading proficiency may serve as an indicator of cognitive reserve, influencing working memory capacity and neural processing.
- These findings highlight the interplay between language skills and cognitive control mechanisms.
Keywords:
P300 componentSternberg taskcognitive reservereading syntactic skillssentence reading performanceworking memoryMore Related Videos
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