Age-related decline in visuo-spatial working memory is reflected by dorsolateral prefrontal activation and cognitive capabilities

Visuo-spatial Working Memory

Dorsolateral prefrontal contributions to human working memory.

Although neuroscience has made remarkable progress in understanding the involvement of prefrontal cortex (PFC) in human memory, the necessity of dorsolateral PFC (dlPFC) for key competencies of working memory remains largely unexplored. We therefore studied human brain lesion patients to determine whether dlPFC is necessary for working memory function, administering subtests of the Wechsler Mem...

The Role of Structure in Age-related Increases in Visuo-spatial Working Memory Span

————— Ineke Imbo, Arnaud Szmalec, and André Vandierendonck are affiliated to the Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University. This research was conducted while Ineke Imbo and Arnaud Szmalec were fellows of the Special Research Fund at Ghent University (grants no. 011D07803 and no. 011D5601). The authors are grateful to Eva Kemps for her constructive comments on an earlier draft of t...

Age-Related Differences in Cortical Activity during a Visuo-Spatial Working Memory Task with Facial Stimuli

Emotion, importantly displayed by facial expressions, is one of the most significant memory modulators. The interaction between memory and the different emotional valences change across lifespan, while young adults (YA) are expected to better recall negative events (Negativity Bias Hypothesis), older adults (OA) tend to focus on positive stimuli (Positivity Effect Hypothesis). This research wor...

Human Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Is Not Necessary for Spatial Working Memory.

A dominant theory, based on electrophysiological and lesion evidence from nonhuman primate studies, posits that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) stores and maintains working memory (WM) representations. Yet, neuroimaging studies have consistently failed to translate these results to humans; these studies normally find that neural activity persists in the human precentral sulcus (PCS) ...