Working memory in dorsolateral frontal cortex

Abstract

It is widely held that the frontal cortex plays a critical role in certain aspects of both spatial and non-spatial working memory. The prevailing view in recent years has been that there are domain-specific subdivisions within dorsal and ventral regions of the prefrontal cortex, which subserve working memory for spatial and non-spatial information, respectively. However, Owen et al. have now used functional magnetic resonance imaging to demonstrate that performance of such tasks involves identical regions of the lateral prefrontal cortex when all factors unrelated to the type of stimulus material are appropriately controlled[1xFunctional organization of spatial and nonspatial memory processing within the human lateral frontal cortex. Owen, A.M. et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 1998; 95: 7721–7726Crossref | PubMed | Scopus (263)See all References[1]. Two similar tasks, one involving the short-term retention and manipulation of spatial information and the other involving non-spatial visual patterns both activated the mid-dorsolateral frontal cortex in six subjects. These data provide evidence that spatial and non-spatial working memory might not be mediated by dorsal and ventral regions, respectively, of the frontal lobe, as widely assumed, and support the alternative notion that specific regions of the lateral frontal cortex make identical executive functional contributions to working memory.