The effect of rehearsal rate and memory load on verbal working memory
By David Fegen, B. Buchsbaum, Mark D'Esposito. 2015
58 citations recorded by the source corpus.
While many neuroimaging studies have investigated verbal working memory (WM) by manipulating memory load, the subvocal rehearsal rate at these various memory loads has generally been left uncontrolled. Therefore, the goal of this study was to investigate how mnemonic load and the rate of subvocal rehearsal modulate patterns of activity in the core neural circuits underlying verbal working memory. Using fMRI in healthy subjects, we orthogonally manipulated subvocal rehearsal rate and memory load in a verbal WM task with long 45-second delay periods. We found that middle frontal gyrus (MFG) and superior parietal lobule (SPL) exhibited memory load effects primarily early in the delay period and did not exhibit rehearsal rate effects. In contrast, we found that inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), premotor cortex (PM) and Sylvian-parietal-temporal region (area Spt) exhibited approximately linear memory load and rehearsal rate effects, with rehearsal rate effects lasting through the entire delay period. These results indicate that IFG, PM and area Spt comprise the core articulatory rehearsal areas involved in verbal WM, while MFG and SPL are recruited in a general supervisory role once a memory load threshold in the core rehearsal network has been exceeded.
Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience
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In Cognitive Neuroscience
Citations in the corpus
- The strength of anticipated distractors shapes EEG alpha and theta oscillations in a Working Memory task (2024, background): “…transverse temporal gyrus and supramarginal gyrus are believed to be important nodes for phonological processing, also involved in grapheme-phoneme conversion, and to serve as core areas for subvocal rehearsal of verbal information (Deschamps et al., 2014; Fegen et al., 2015; Junker et al., 2023).”