The Impact of Prefrontal Cortex for Selective Attention in a Visual Working Memory Task

In this study, a variant of the n-back task was used to investigate electrophysiological correlates of top-down processes in visual-object working memory. Event-related potentials were used to replicate results concerning an attention related modulation of neural processes and to investigate the involvement of prefrontal cortex in this modulation. 16 healthy subjects executed an n-back task with sequentially presented faces and scenes. Attention was selectively directed to only one stimulus category. We found an enhancement of the N170 amplitudes for relevant stimuli compared to irrelevant or neutral stimuli. Late frontal amplitudes were stronger positive for relevant compared to neutral stimuli indicating selective attention processes of working memory. Evidence for selective inhibition was not found.     

Brain Activation during Working Memory after Traumatic Brain Injury in Children

Eight children with moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) and eight matched, uninjured control children underwent fMRI during an N-back task to test effects of TBI on working memory performance and brain activation. Two patterns in the TBI group were observed. Patients whose criterion performance was reached at lower memory loads than control children demonstrated less extensive frontal and extrafrontal brain activation than controls. Patients who performed the same, highest (3-back) memory load as controls demonstrated more frontal and extrafrontal activation than controls. Our findings of performance and brain activation changes in children after TBI await longitudinal investigation.     

Working Memory Encoding and Maintenance Deficits in Schizophrenia: Neural Evidence for Activation and Deactivation Abnormalities

Substantial evidence implicates working memory (WM) as a core deficit in schizophrenia (SCZ), purportedly due to primary deficits in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex functioning. Recent findings suggest that SCZ is also associated with abnormalities in suppression of certain regions during cognitive engagement—namely the default mode system—that may further contribute to WM pathology. However, no study has systematically examined activation and suppression abnormalities across both encoding and maintenance phases of WM in SCZ. Twenty-eight patients and 24 demographically matched healthy subjects underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging at 3T while performing a delayed match-to-sample WM task. Groups were accuracy matched to rule out performance effects. Encoding load was identical across subjects to facilitate comparisons across WM phases. We examined activation differences using an assumed model approach at the whole-brain level and within meta-analytically defined WM areas. Despite matched performance, we found regions showing less recruitment during encoding and maintenance for SCZ subjects. Furthermore, we identified 2 areas closely matching the default system, which SCZ subjects failed to deactivate across WM phases. Lastly, activation in prefrontal regions predicted the degree of deactivation for healthy but not SCZ subjects. Current results replicate and extend prefrontal recruitment abnormalities across WM phases in SCZ. Results also indicate deactivation abnormalities across WM phases, possibly due to inefficient prefrontal recruitment. Such regional deactivation may be critical for suppressing sources of interference during WM trace formation. Thus, deactivation deficits may constitute an additional source of impairments, which needs to be further characterized for a complete understanding of WM pathology in SCZ.     

Response to Lithium in Bipolar Disorder: Clinical and Genetic Findings

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Brain Activation Patterns Associated with the Effects of Emotional Distracters during Working Memory Maintenance in Patients with Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Few studies have assessed the neural mechanisms of the effects of emotion on cognition in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) patients. In this functional MRI (fMRI), we investigated the effects of emotional interference on working memory (WM) maintenance in GAD patients. Fifteen patients with GAD participated in this study. Event-related fMRI data were obtained while the participants performed a WM task (face recognition) with neutral and anxiety-provoking distracters. The GAD patients showed impaired performance in WM task during emotional distracters and showed greater activation on brain regions such as DLPFC, VLPFC, amygdala, hippocampus which are responsible for the active maintenance of goal relevant information in WM and emotional processing. Although our results are not conclusive, our finding cautiously suggests the cognitive-affective interaction in GAD patients which shown interfering effect of emotional distracters on WM maintenance.     

Intermittent “Real‐time” fMRI Feedback Is Superior to Continuous Presentation for a Motor Imagery Task: A Pilot Study

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND

Real‐time functional MRI feedback (RTfMRIf) is a developing technique, with unanswered methodological questions. Given a delay of seconds between neural activity and the measurable hemodynamic response, one issue is the optimal method for presentation of neurofeedback to subjects. The primary objective of this preliminary study was to compare the methods of continuous and intermittent presentation of neural feedback on targeted brain activity.

METHODS

Thirteen participants performed a motor imagery task and were instructed to increase activation in an individually defined region of left premotor cortex using RTfMRIf. The fMRI signal change was compared between real and false feedback for scans with either continuous or intermittent feedback presentation.

RESULTS

More individuals were able to increase their fMRI signal with intermittent feedback, while some individuals had decreased signal with continuous feedback. The evaluation of feedback itself activated an extensive amount of brain regions, and false feedback resulted in brain activation outside of the individually defined region of interest.

CONCLUSIONS

As implemented in this study, intermittent presentation of feedback is more effective than continuous presentation in promoting self‐modulation of brain activity. Furthermore, it appears that the process of evaluating feedback involves many brain regions that can be isolated using intermittent presentation.