Skip Navigation



Cerebral Cortex Advance Access published online on October 18, 2007
Cerebral Cortex, doi:10.1093/cercor/bhm175
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
18/6/1421    most recent
bhm175v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Kar Ray, M.
Right arrow Articles by Crow, T. J.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Kar Ray, M.
Right arrow Articles by Crow, T. J.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© 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


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.