Authors:

OWEN, A.M., Stern, C. E., Look, R. B., Tracey, I., Rosen, B. R. & Petrides, M.

Reference:

Year of publication:

1998

CBU number:

3657

Abstract:

It is widely held that the frontal cortex plays a critical role in both spatial and non-spatial working memory. It has recently been suggested that there may be modality-specific sub-divisions within dorsal and ventral regions of the lateral frontal cortex which independently subserve working memory for spatial and non-spatial information, respectively. This hypothesis has been widely accepted in the literature and has formed the theoretical background against which the results of several recent functional neuroimaging studies of working memory in humans have been discussed. The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to demonstrate that, within the human brain, spatial and non-spatial working memory tasks involve the same region of the lateral frontal cortex when all factors unrelated to stimulus modality are appropriately controlled. These results provide the first evidence that lateral regions of the frontal lobe are not functionally organised according to stimulus modality, as has been widely assumed, and support the alternative notion that specific regions of the lateral frontal cortex make identical functional contributions to both spatial and non-spatial working memory.