Abstract
The function of the ventral parietal cortex (VPC) is subject to much debate. Many studies suggest a lateralization of function in the VPC, with the left hemisphere facilitating verbal working memory and the right subserving stimulus-driven attention. However, many attentional tasks elicit activity in the VPC bilaterally. To elucidate the potential divides across the VPC in function, we assessed the pattern of activity in the VPC bilaterally across two tasks that require different demands, an oddball attentional task with low working memory demands and a working memory task. An anterior region of the VPC was bilaterally active during novel targets in the oddball task and during retrieval in WM, while more posterior regions of the VPC displayed dissociable functions in the left and right hemisphere, with the left being active during the encoding and retrieval of WM, but not during the oddball task and the right showing the reverse pattern. These results suggest that bilateral regions of the anterior VPC subserve non-mnemonic processes, such as stimulus-driven attention during WM retrieval and oddball detection. The left posterior VPC may be important for speech-related processing important for both working memory and perception, while the right hemisphere is more lateralized for attention.
Highlights
The ventral parietal cortex (VPC) is a large region encompassing both the supramarginal and angular gyri, and its function has been the subject of much study and debate in cognitive neuroscience (Cabeza et al, 2012; Mars et al, 2012; Carter and Huettel, 2013)
We examined the pattern of activity in two different tasks that reliably evoke activity in the left VPC – verbal working memory and oddball detection – that differ in the demand they place on the memory system
We found that more anterior regions of the VPC were active during the oddball task and WM retrieval, bilaterally, while posterior regions of the VPC showed dissociable responses; the left pVPC was engaged during the WM task, but not during the oddball task and the right pVPC showed the opposite pattern
Summary
The ventral parietal cortex (VPC) is a large region encompassing both the supramarginal and angular gyri, and its function has been the subject of much study and debate in cognitive neuroscience (Cabeza et al, 2012; Mars et al, 2012; Carter and Huettel, 2013). Anterior regions of the supramarginal gyrus, outside the TPJ, have been attributed a wide variety of functions including verbal working memory storage (Paulesu et al, 1993; Jonides et al, 1998) and sensory motor processing (Schwartz et al, 2012; Warbrick et al, 2013) Some of these functions are claimed to be lateralized; for example, stimulus-driven attention and social cognition are claimed to be lateralized to the right hemisphere whereas speech and language processing (e.g., verbal working memory storage, auditory-motor integration) are more dominant in the left hemisphere (Duncan et al, 1999; Szczepanski et al, 2010; Szczepanski and Kastner, 2013).
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