Abstract
Verbal working memory (VWM) engages frontal and temporal/parietal circuits subserving the phonological loop, as well as, superior and inferior cerebellar regions which have projections from these neocortical areas. Different cerebro-cerebellar circuits may be engaged for integrating aurally- and visually-presented information for VWM. The present fMRI study investigated load (2, 4, or 6 letters) and modality (auditory and visual) dependent cerebro-cerebellar VWM activation using a Sternberg task. FMRI revealed modality-independent activations in left frontal (BA 6/9/44), insular, cingulate (BA 32), and bilateral inferior parietal/supramarginal (BA 40) regions, as well as in bilateral superior (HVI) and right inferior (HVIII) cerebellar regions. Visual presentation evoked prominent activations in right superior (HVI/CrusI) cerebellum, bilateral occipital (BA19) and left parietal (BA7/40) cortex while auditory presentation showed robust activations predominately in bilateral temporal regions (BA21/22). In the cerebellum, we noted a visual to auditory emphasis of function progressing from superior to inferior and from lateral to medial regions. These results extend our previous findings of fMRI activation in cerebro-cerebellar networks during VWM, and demonstrate both modality dependent commonalities and differences in activations with increasing memory load.
Highlights
Verbal working memory (VWM) is the temporary storage – and often, the manipulation – of units of linguistic information in memory, allowing the brain to perform higher cognitive functions such as language comprehension and reasoning
Two main conclusions regarding the modality dependence of the cerebro-cerebellar networks in VWM can be drawn from these data
The first is that, many neocortical and cerebellar regions are utilized in both modalities (Table 1), there are important differences in brain activation between the modalities which can help us understand how modality specific information is processed in the brain
Summary
Verbal working memory (VWM) is the temporary storage – and often, the manipulation – of units of linguistic information in memory, allowing the brain to perform higher cognitive functions such as language comprehension and reasoning. Supported by known cerebro-ponto-cerebellar projections from primate studies [11,53], Desmond’s model suggests that the superior cerebellum functionally relates to the articulatory control system, while the inferior cerebellum links more closely to the phonological store [15]. Both the cortical and cerebellar regions associated with the phonological loop show increased activation with parametrically increasing memory load [10, 19,29,36,37,52,66]. The current models of cerebro-cerebellar involvement in VWM have not been fully characterized with stimuli of differing modalities
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