Functional Brain Activity within the Medial and Lateral Portion of BA10 during a Prospective Memory Task

Francesco Barban,Alberto Costa,Giovanni Augusto Carlesimo,Carlo Caltagirone,Emiliano Macaluso

doi:10.1155/2013/546823

Abstract

In this study we tested the gateway hypothesis of Broadmann area 10 (BA10). With a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) protocol we manipulated the saliency–stimulus-oriented (SO) attending– and the memory load – stimulus-independent (SI) attending–during a prospective memory (PM) task. We found a significant main effect of the SO manipulation within the medial BA10 and a significant interaction between SI attending and PM task within the left lateral BA10. Our results give experimental support to the gateway hypothesis.

Highlights

The Brodmann Area 10 (BA10) has been recently found to be critically involved in the integration of the outcome of different cognitive operations for the achievement of goals in complex situations [1]
We manipulated the stimulus-independent though (SI) and the stimulus-oriented though (SO) attending of prospective memory (PM) cues assuming to modulate respectively brain activity within BA10lat and BA10med
We averaged the bold signal (MarsBar 0.41, “MARseille Boite A Region d’Interet” SPM toolbox) within two 10 mm radius spherical region of interests (ROI) centered on peaks of main activity within the BA10med and left BA10lat isolated with the functional localizer task

Summary

Introduction

The Brodmann Area 10 (BA10) has been recently found to be critically involved in the integration of the outcome of different cognitive operations for the achievement of goals in complex situations [1]. Some authors suggest a functional dissociation between the medial (BA10med) and the lateral (BA10lat) portions of BA10 [2] These observations rely upon functional neuroimaging studies that consistently detected an increase of the activity of BA10lat and a decrease of the activity of BA10med during prospective memory tasks. At present, it is not clear whether or not the function-. We manipulated the SI and the SO attending of PM cues assuming to modulate respectively brain activity within BA10lat and BA10med For this reason we included in this study a functional localizer for the two portions of BA10 [4,5]

Methods

Results

Discussion