Investigating Cognitive and Neural Bases of Working Memory

描述（由申请人提供）：工作记忆是指当信息不存在于环境中时，在有意识的意识中保留信息，对其进行操纵，并在指导行为中使用信息。工作记忆被认为对语言理解、学习、计划、推理和一般流体智力等基本认知功能和特性起着至关重要的作用。此外，工作记忆表现的个体差异预测了一系列显著的“现实世界”结果测量，从阅读能力到标准化测试成绩，从社会经济地位到人格特征。因此，了解工作记忆功能的认知和神经基础是理解正常认知及其神经和精神功能障碍的核心。PI的研究项目调查了工作记忆功能的认知和神经基础。它是在这样一个框架内进行研究的：工作记忆是一种突现的特性，它源于大脑系统的协调招募，通过注意力，大脑系统已经进化到完成与感觉、表征或行动相关的功能。目前申请更新PI的R01的具体目标是建立在这项工作的基础上，通过阐明假设，比2003年提出的假设更能支持更强的推断（由于增加了用于测量功能连通性的新颖多元方法和重复经颅磁刺激（rTMS）到PI的方法装备），并通过测试PI最近工作中产生的机制假设。具体目标1：验证工作记忆存储是由pfc后区域的广泛分布、功能连接的网络支持的假设。具体目标2：验证工作记忆存储部分是通过长期记忆（LTM）表征的临时激活完成的假设。具体目的3：验证额叶视野（FEF）是支持工作记忆存储的注意激活来源的假设。工作记忆损伤见于许多神经、精神和发育障碍。因此，更好地了解工作记忆功能的认知和神经生物学组织，可能对这些疾病患者的诊断、临床治疗和认知康复具有重要意义。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Working memory refers to the retention of information in conscious awareness when this information is not present in the environment, to its manipulation, and to its use in guiding behavior. Working memory has been implicated as a critical contributor to such essential cognitive functions and properties as language comprehension, learning, planning, reasoning, and general fluid intelligence. Additionally, individual differences in working memory performance predict a remarkable array of "real world" outcome measures, from reading ability to standardized test performance to socioeconomic status to personality traits. Thus, understanding the cognitive and neural bases of working memory functions is central to understanding normal cognition, as well as its neurological and psychiatric dysfunctions. The PI's research program investigates the cognitive and neural bases of working memory function. It does so within a framework that holds that working memory is an emergent property that arises from the coordinated recruitment, via attention, of brain systems that have evolved to accomplish sensory-, representation-, or action-related functions. The Specific Aims of the present application for renewal of the PI's R01 build on this work by articulating hypotheses than will support stronger inference than could those proposed in 2003 (due to the addition of novel multivariate methods for measuring functional connectivity and of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to the PI's methodological armamentarium), and by testing mechanistic hypotheses that have arisen from the PI's recent work. They are: Specific Aim 1: To test the hypothesis that working memory storage is supported by broadly distributed, functionally connected networks of regions posterior to the PFC. Specific Aim 2: To test the hypothesis that working memory storage is accomplished, in part, via the temporary activation of long-term memory (LTM) representations. Specific Aim 3: To test the hypothesis that the frontal eye fields (FEF) are a source of the attentional activation that supports working memory storage. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE Impairments of working memory are seen in many neurological, psychiatric, and developmental disorders. Achieving a better understanding of the cognitive and neurobiological organization of working memory functions, therefore, may have important implications for the diagnosis, clinical treatment, and cognitive rehabilitation of patients with these disorders.