RESEARCH ARTICLE
Capacity-Speed Relationships in Prefrontal Cortex
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1 Radiology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America, 2 Neuroscience Training Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America, 3 School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America, 4Center for Brain Health, University of Texas-Dallas, Dallas, Texas, United States of America, 5 Department of Neurology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America, 6 Cardiovascular Research Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America, 7 Departments of Emergency Medicine, Brigham & Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, 8 Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America
Abstract Top
Working memory (WM) capacity and WM processing speed are simple cognitive measures that underlie human performance in complex processes such as reasoning and language comprehension. These cognitive measures have shown to be interrelated in behavioral studies, yet the neural mechanism behind this interdependence has not been elucidated. We have carried out two functional MRI studies to separately identify brain regions involved in capacity and speed. Experiment 1, using a block-design WM verbal task, identified increased WM capacity with increased activity in right prefrontal regions, and Experiment 2, using a single-trial WM verbal task, identified increased WM processing speed with increased activity in similar regions. Our results suggest that right prefrontal areas may be a common region interlinking these two cognitive measures. Moreover, an overlap analysis with regions associated with binding or chunking suggest that this strategic memory consolidation process may be the mechanism interlinking WM capacity and WM speed.
