Neuroimaging a Single Thought: Dorsolateral PFC Activity Associated with Refreshing Just-Activated Information

Neuroimaging studies of human working memory (WM) show conflicting results regarding whether dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) contributes to maintaining information in consciousness or is recruited primarily when information must be manipulated. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we looked at a minimal maintenance process--thinking back to a single, just-seen stimulus (refreshing). We found greater activity in left dorsolateral PFC (BA9) when participants refreshed a word compared to reading a word once or a second time. Furthermore, recognition memory was subsequently more accurate and faster for items that had been refreshed, demonstrating that a single thought that maintains activation can have consequences for long-term memory. Our fMRI results call into question any class of models of the functional organization of PFC and WM that associates simple and/or maintenance processes only with ventrolateral PFC or that associates dorsolateral PFC only with more complex processes such as manipulation.

[1]  Edward E. Smith,et al.  The Role of Parietal Cortex in Verbal Working Memory , 1998, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[2]  R. Henson,et al.  Frontal lobes and human memory: insights from functional neuroimaging. , 2001, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[3]  M. D’Esposito,et al.  Functional MRI studies of spatial and nonspatial working memory. , 1998, Brain research. Cognitive brain research.

[4]  George Sperling,et al.  The information available in brief visual presentations. , 1960 .

[5]  J. Duncan,et al.  Common regions of the human frontal lobe recruited by diverse cognitive demands , 2000, Trends in Neurosciences.

[6]  A. Dale,et al.  Building memories: remembering and forgetting of verbal experiences as predicted by brain activity. , 1998, Science.

[7]  P. Goldman-Rakic.  Architecture of the Prefrontal Cortex and the Central Executive , 1995, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[8]  Jonathan D. Cohen,et al.  Improved Assessment of Significant Activation in Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI): Use of a Cluster‐Size Threshold , 1995, Magnetic resonance in medicine.

[9]  F. Craik,et al.  Levels of Pro-cessing: A Framework for Memory Research , 1975 .

[10]  M. Farah,et al.  Role of left inferior prefrontal cortex in retrieval of semantic knowledge: a reevaluation. , 1997, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[11]  G. Mandler.  ORGANIZATION AND MEMORY1 , 1977 .

[12]  J. Jonides,et al.  Storage and executive processes in the frontal lobes. , 1999, Science.

[13]  William Hirst,et al.  MEM: Memory Subsystems as Processes , 2019, Theories of Memory.

[14]  Marcia K. Johnson,et al.  Contextual prerequisites for understanding: Some investigations of comprehension and recall , 1972 .

[15]  Tudor S. G. Jones,et al.  Theories of Memory , 1925 .

[16]  Leslie G. Ungerleider,et al.  Distinguishing the Functional Roles of Multiple Regions in Distributed Neural Systems for Visual Working Memory , 2000, NeuroImage.

[17]  Carol A. Fowler,et al.  Lexical access with and without awareness , 1981 .

[18]  G. A. Miller.  THE PSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW THE MAGICAL NUMBER SEVEN, PLUS OR MINUS TWO: SOME LIMITS ON OUR CAPACITY FOR PROCESSING INFORMATION 1 , 1956 .

[19]  M. Torrens.  Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain—3-Dimensional Proportional System: An Approach to Cerebral Imaging, J. Talairach, P. Tournoux. Georg Thieme Verlag, New York (1988), 122 pp., 130 figs. DM 268 , 1990 .

[20]  Marcia K. Johnson,et al.  fMRI investigations of left and right PFC contributions to episodic remembering , 2000, Psychobiology.

[21]  R. Cabeza,et al.  Imaging Cognition II: An Empirical Review of 275 PET and fMRI Studies , 2000, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[22]  E. Tulving.  Subjective organization in free recall of "unrelated" words. , 1962, Psychological review.

[23]  Jordan Grafman,et al.  Handbook of Neuropsychology , 1991 .

[24]  G. Bower.  Organizational factors in memory. , 1970 .

[25]  D. Broadbent.  Perception and communication , 1958 .

[26]  R. Passingham,et al.  The prefrontal cortex: response selection or maintenance within working memory? , 2000, 5th IEEE EMBS International Summer School on Biomedical Imaging, 2002..

[27]  A. Shimamura,et al.  Frontal Lobes and Memory , 2002 .

[28]  Steven M. Smith,et al.  Type I rehearsal: Maintenance and more , 1977 .

[29]  B. Postle,et al.  Maintenance versus Manipulation of Information Held in Working Memory: An Event-Related fMRI Study , 1999, Brain and Cognition.

[30]  J. Mazziotta,et al.  Rapid Automated Algorithm for Aligning and Reslicing PET Images , 1992, Journal of computer assisted tomography.

[31]  Marcia K. Johnson,et al.  Consciousness as meta-processing. , 1997 .

[32]  T. Shallice,et al.  “Sculpting the Response Space”—An Account of Left Prefrontal Activation at Encoding , 2000, NeuroImage.

[33]  Jack L. Lancaster,et al.  The Talairach Daemon a database server for talairach atlas labels , 1997 .

[34]  G. Paxinos,et al.  Atlas of the Human Brain , 2000 .

[35]  Jonathan W. Schooler,et al.  Scientific Approaches to Consciousness , 1997 .

[36]  Edward E. Smith,et al.  Temporal dynamics of brain activation during a working memory task , 1997, Nature.

[37]  S C Rao,et al.  Integration of what and where in the primate prefrontal cortex. , 1997, Science.

[38]  R W Cox,et al.  AFNI: software for analysis and visualization of functional magnetic resonance neuroimages. , 1996, Computers and biomedical research, an international journal.

[39]  Alan C. Evans,et al.  Functional activation of the human frontal cortex during the performance of verbal working memory tasks. , 1993, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[40]  J. Cohen,et al.  Spiral K‐space MR imaging of cortical activation , 1995, Journal of magnetic resonance imaging : JMRI.

[41]  Marcia K. Johnson.  MEM: Mechanisms of Recollection , 1992, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[42]  Marcia K. Johnson,et al.  Second Thoughts versus Second Looks: An Age-Related Deficit in Reflectively Refreshing Just-Activated Information , 2002, Psychological science.

[43]  Marcia K. Johnson,et al.  The role of prefrontal cortex during tests of episodic memory , 1998, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.