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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on October 18, 2007
Cerebral Cortex 2008 18(6):1421-1428; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhm175
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Bilateral Generic Working Memory Circuit Requires Left-Lateralized Addition for Verbal Processing

Manaan Kar Ray1,2, Clare E. Mackay2, Catherine J. Harmer2 and Timothy J. Crow2

1 Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Partnership National Health Service Trust, Warneford Hospital, Warneford Lane, Oxford OX3 7JX, UK, 2 Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Warneford Hospital, Warneford Lane, Oxford OX3 7JX, UK

Address correspondence to Dr Manaan Kar Ray, Schizophrenia, A National Emergency, Prince of Wales International Centre for SANE Research, Warneford Hospital, Warneford Lane, Oxford OX3 7JX, UK. Email: manaan.ray{at}psych.ox.ac.uk

According to the Baddeley–Hitch model, phonological and visuospatial representations are separable components of working memory (WM) linked by a central executive. The traditional view that the separation reflects the relative contribution of the 2 hemispheres (verbal WM—left; spatial WM—right) has been challenged by the position that a common bilateral frontoparietal network subserves both domains. Here, we test the hypothesis that there is a generic WM circuit that recruits additional specialized regions for verbal and spatial processing. We designed a functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm to elicit activation in the WM circuit for verbal and spatial information using identical stimuli and applied this in 33 healthy controls. We detected left-lateralized quantitative differences in the left frontal and temporal lobe for verbal > spatial WM but no areas of activation for spatial > verbal WM. We speculate that spatial WM is analogous to a "generic" bilateral frontoparietal WM circuit we inherited from our great ape ancestors that evolved, by recruitment of additional left-lateralized frontal and temporal regions, to accommodate language.

Key Words: functional MRI • language • laterality • neuroimaging • phonological loop • visuospatial sketchpad • working memory


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