TY - JOUR
T1 - Examining distinct working memory processes in children and adolescents using fMRI
T2 - Results and validation of a modified Brown-Peterson paradigm
AU - Siffredi, Vanessa
AU - Barrouillet, Pierre
AU - Spencer-Smith, Megan
AU - Vaessen, Maarten
AU - Anderson, Vicki
AU - Vuilleumier, Patrik
PY - 2017/7/13
Y1 - 2017/7/13
N2 - Verbal working memory (WM) comprises different processes (encoding, maintenance, retrieval) that are often compromised in brain diseases, but their neural correlates have not yet been examined in childhood and adolescence. To probe WM processes and associated neural correlates in developmental samples, and obtain comparable effects across different ages and populations, we designed an adapted Brown-Peterson task (verbal encoding and retrieval combined with verbal and visual concurrent tasks during maintenance) to implement during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In a sample of typically developing children and adolescents (n = 16), aged 8 to 16 years, our paradigm successfully identified distinct patterns of activation for encoding, maintenance, and retrieval. While encoding activated perceptual systems in posterior and ventral visual regions, retrieval activated fronto-parietal regions associated with executive control and attention. We found a different impact of verbal versus visual concurrent processing during WM maintenance: at retrieval, the former condition evoked greater activations in visual cortex, as opposed to selective involvement of language-related areas in left temporal cortex in the latter condition. These results are in accord with WM models, suggesting greater competition for processing resources when retrieval follows within-domain compared with cross-domain interference. This pattern was found regardless of age. Our study provides a novel paradigm to investigate distinct WM brain systems with reliable results across a wide age range in developmental populations, and suitable for participants with different WM capacities.
AB - Verbal working memory (WM) comprises different processes (encoding, maintenance, retrieval) that are often compromised in brain diseases, but their neural correlates have not yet been examined in childhood and adolescence. To probe WM processes and associated neural correlates in developmental samples, and obtain comparable effects across different ages and populations, we designed an adapted Brown-Peterson task (verbal encoding and retrieval combined with verbal and visual concurrent tasks during maintenance) to implement during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In a sample of typically developing children and adolescents (n = 16), aged 8 to 16 years, our paradigm successfully identified distinct patterns of activation for encoding, maintenance, and retrieval. While encoding activated perceptual systems in posterior and ventral visual regions, retrieval activated fronto-parietal regions associated with executive control and attention. We found a different impact of verbal versus visual concurrent processing during WM maintenance: at retrieval, the former condition evoked greater activations in visual cortex, as opposed to selective involvement of language-related areas in left temporal cortex in the latter condition. These results are in accord with WM models, suggesting greater competition for processing resources when retrieval follows within-domain compared with cross-domain interference. This pattern was found regardless of age. Our study provides a novel paradigm to investigate distinct WM brain systems with reliable results across a wide age range in developmental populations, and suitable for participants with different WM capacities.
KW - Journal Article
KW - N-BACK TASK
KW - CAPACITY
KW - ATTENTION
KW - INDIVIDUAL-DIFFERENCES
KW - HUMAN BRAIN
KW - NEURAL BASIS
KW - DEVELOPMENTAL-CHANGES
KW - NATIONAL CURRICULUM
KW - SHORT-TERM-MEMORY
KW - WORD FORM AREA
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0179959
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0179959
M3 - Article
C2 - 28704424
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 12
JO - PLOS ONE
JF - PLOS ONE
IS - 7
M1 - 0179959
ER -