Methylphenidate Enhances Working Memory by Modulating Discrete Frontal and Parietal Lobe Regions in the Human Brain
By M. Mehta, Adrian M. Owen, Barbara J. Sahakian, N. Mavaddat, J. Pickard, Trevor W. Robbins. Journal of Neuroscience, 2000
625 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The indirect catecholamine agonist methylphenidate (Ritalin) is the drug treatment of choice in attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD), one of the most common behavioral disorders of childhood (DSM-IV), although symptoms may persist into adulthood. Methylphenidate can enhance cognitive performance in adults and children diagnosed with AD/HD (Kempton et al., 1999; Riordan et al., 1999) and also in normal human volunteers on tasks sensitive to frontal lobe damage, including aspects of spatial working memory (SWM) performance (Elliott et al., 1997). The present study investigated changes in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) induced by methylphenidate during performance of a self-ordered SWM task to define the neuroanatomical loci of the beneficial effect of the drug. The results show that the methylphenidate-induced improvements in working memory performance occur with task-related reductions in rCBF in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and posterior parietal cortex. The beneficial effects of methylphenidate on working memory were greatest in the subjects with lower baseline working memory capacity. This is to our knowledge the first demonstration of a localization of a drug-induced improvement in SWM performance in humans and has relevance for understanding the treatment of AD/HD.
Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychiatry and Mental health
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c03d6770fc92d1335dada9b66e2f10028e4aaf0e
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Cognitive Neuroscience
- A. Arnsten
- Peter M. Gollwitzer
- Tal Yarkoni
- Todd S. Braver
- Ulman E. R. Lindenberger
- Lars Nyberg
- Shu-Chen Li
- Lars Farde
In Psychiatry and Mental health
Citations in the corpus
- Cognitive Neuroscience Approaches to Individual Differences in Working Memory and Executive Control: Conceptual and Methodological Issues (2010, methodology): “An alternative multivariate technique used in a number of WM/EC studies involving individual differences (e.g., Caplan, McIntosh, & De Rosa, 2007; DellaMaggiore et al., 2000; Grady et al., 1998) is Partial Least Squares (PLS; McIntosh, Bookstein, Haxby, & Grady, 1996; McIntosh & Lobaugh, 2004).”
- Implementation Intentions Facilitate Response Inhibition in Children with ADHD (2008, background): “Research additionally shows that ADHD is associated with decreased activity in frontal brain areas and increased activity in posterior (parietal and occipital) brain areas (Durston, 2003), and that MPH affects not only frontal but also posterior areas (Mehta et al., 2000).”
- Inverted-U dopamine D1 receptor actions on prefrontal neurons engaged in working memory (2007, result): “The reduction in processing of 'noise' by D1R stimulation seen in the current study is consonant with results observed in imaging studies of human subjects performing working memory tasks, whereby cognition-enhancing doses of stimulant medication actually reduce the area of PFC activated by task dem”
- The correlative triad among aging, dopamine, and cognition: current status and future prospects. (2006, background): “Kimberg et al. (1997) found that persons with low working-memory capacity showed positive bromocriptinerelated effects on working-memory performance, whereas those with high working-memory capacity showed negative effects (see also Mehta et al., 2000).”