Neural dynamics of verbal working memory in auditory description naming

Erik C Brown,Toshimune Kambara,Yasuo Nakai,Brian H Silverstein,Eishi Asano

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-33776-2

Abstract

Auditory naming is suggested to require verbal working memory (WM) operations in addition to speech sound perception during the sentence listening period and semantic/syntactic processing during the subsequent judgement period. We attempted to dissect cortical activations attributable to verbal WM from those otherwise involved in answering auditory sentence questions. We studied 19 patients who underwent electrocorticography recordings and measured high-gamma activity during auditory naming and WM tasks. In the auditory naming task, inferior-precentral high-gamma activity was augmented during sentence listening, and the magnitude of augmentation was independently correlated to that during the WM task maintenance period as well as patient age. High-gamma augmentation during the WM task scanning period accounted for high-gamma variance during the naming task judgement period in some of the left frontal association neocortex regions (most significantly in the middle-frontal, less in the inferior-frontal, and least in the orbitofrontal gyrus). Inferior-frontal high-gamma augmentation was left-hemispheric dominant during naming task judgement but rather symmetric during WM scanning. Left orbitofrontal high-gamma augmentation was evident only during the naming task judgement period but minimal during the WM task scanning period. The inferior-precentral regions may exert WM maintenance during sentence listening, and such maintenance function may be gradually strengthened as the brain matures. The left frontal association neocortex may have a dorsal-to-ventral gradient in functional roles during naming task judgement. Namely, left middle-frontal activation may be well-attributable to WM scanning function, whereas left orbitofrontal activation may be attributable less to WM scanning but more largely to syntactic/semantic processing.

Highlights

If you are asked the question: ‘What flies in the sky?’ Your answer might be ‘bird’ or ‘plane’
Taking into account that our working memory task does not require semantic or syntactic processing (Fig. 2), we hypothesized that the inferior-precentral gyrus (iPreCG) high-gamma augmentation during the sentence listening period of the naming task would be attributed to working memory maintenance function
Results iPreCG high-gamma augmentation during naming task sentence listening correlated to highgamma during working memory task maintenance period

Summary

Introduction

If you are asked the question: ‘What flies in the sky?’ Your answer might be ‘bird’ or ‘plane’. While undergoing extraoperative ECoG recording as part of presurgical evaluation, patients with focal epilepsy were assigned (i) an auditory naming task (i.e.: overt naming in response to a spoken question[7]; Fig. 1) and (ii) an auditory working memory task[8] This working memory task was designed to effectively localize electrode sites involved in either maintenance or scanning of auditory letter stimuli (Fig. 2). Taking into account that our working memory task does not require semantic or syntactic processing (Fig. 2), we hypothesized that the iPreCG high-gamma augmentation during the sentence listening period of the naming task would be attributed to working memory maintenance function. We tested our prediction that the magnitude of high-gamma augmentation at a given iPreCG site during naming task sentence listening (Fig. 1A) would positively correlate to that during working memory task maintenance period (Fig. 2A).

Methods

Results

Conclusion