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，并用于指导行为。工作记忆被认为是语言理解、学习、计划、推理和一般流体智力等基本认知功能和特性的关键贡献者。此外，工作记忆表现的个体差异预测了一系列显著的“真实的世界”结果指标，从阅读能力到标准化测试表现，从社会经济地位到人格特质。因此，理解工作记忆功能的认知和神经基础对于理解正常认知以及其神经和精神功能障碍至关重要。PI的研究项目调查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的，即工作记忆是一种新出现的特性，它来自于通过注意力协调招募的大脑系统，这些大脑系统已经进化为完成感觉、表征或动作相关的功能。本申请更新PI R01的具体目的是通过阐明将支持比2003年提出的那些更强的推断的假设来建立在这项工作的基础上（由于增加了测量功能连接的新型多变量方法和PI方法学设备中的重复经颅磁刺激（rTMS）），并通过测试从PI最近的工作中产生的机械假设。它们是：具体目标1：为了测试的假设，即工作记忆存储支持广泛分布的，功能连接的区域后PFC的网络。具体目标2：为了测试的假设，即工作记忆存储完成，部分，通过临时激活的长期记忆（LTM）的表示。具体目标3：验证额叶眼区是支持工作记忆储存的注意激活源这一假设。公共卫生相关性工作记忆障碍见于许多神经、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.