Contributions of right inferior temporal-occipital cortex to visual word and non-word priming

Authors:

• Diane Swick

• Robert T. Knight

Date: 1995

PubMed: 8742406

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Abstract:

Little is known about the neural substrates of indirect forms of memory such as priming. Electrophysiological (ERP) and behavioral data were recorded from controls and three patients with damage in the right parahippocampal and lingual gyri, with variable extension into posterior hippocampus and striate/extrastriate cortex. Visually presented words and non-words were repeated after one of three delays in a lexical decision task. The late positive ERP deflection related to stimulus repetition was diminished at all scalp sites, suggesting dysfunction in a neural system associated with priming. The patients also failed to show significant reaction time priming at intermediate and long delays. These results demonstrate the importance of right inferior temporal-occipital cortex for ERP and behavioral manifestations of verbal priming.

Prefrontal alterations during memory processing in aging

Authors:

• Lynn Nielsen-Bohlman

• Robert T. Knight

Date: 1995

PubMed: 8590826

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Abstract:

Studies of human amnesia provide evidence for a short-term memory store with information transfer to long-term memory occurring within 60 sec of encoding. Frontal cortical activation is critical for maintenance of the short-term store, and limbic structure are necessary for access to the long-term store. The P3 and N4 components of the event-related potential (ERP) are generated during memory processes mediated by these brain regions. The current study examines the effects of age on ERPs generated to correctly identified stimuli presented at delays of 1-150 sec in a visual recognition memory task. Consistently different evoked potentials and performance were obtained to stimuli repeated at 1.2 sec delay as opposed to stimuli repeated at delays of over 4 sec in all subjects. At the 1.2 sec delay, the performance and posterior P3 amplitudes generated by old and young subjects were comparable. At longer delays, the older subjects had impaired performance and decreased P3 amplitude at posterior scalp sites. In addition, fronto-central N4 activity was reduced at long delays in the elderly. Older subjects generated a sustained frontal positivity (50-800 msec) to both short and long delay stimuli that was not observed in the younger group. The late phase of the frontal positivity was enhanced at long delays in the elderly. The data provide evidence of intact rapid and impaired delayed recognition memory in aging. Alternations in frontal cortical control of posterior and limbic regions may contribute to the memory changes observed in aging.

Is prefrontal cortex involved in cued recall? A neuropsychological test of PET findings

Authors:

• Diane Swick

• Robert T. Knight

Date: 1995

PubMed: 8843069

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Abstract:

Positron emission tomography (PET) experiments have detected blood flow activations in right anterior prefrontal cortex during performance of a word stem cued recall task [3, 38]. Based on findings from a variety of PET studies, the "hemispheric encoding/retrieval asymmetry model" [44] was proposed to explain the role of the frontal lobes in episodic memory. This model asserts that left prefrontal cortex is preferentially involved in the encoding of new information into episodic memory, whereas right prefrontal cortex is more involved in episodic memory retrieval. As a neuropsychological test of this hypothesis, a group of frontal patients with lesions in areas 6, 8, 9, 10, 44, 45 and/or 46 (11 left, five right) were run on word stem cued recall under two semantic study conditions. As a group, these patients were not significantly impaired in cued recall. In the first but not the second experiment, left frontal patients recalled fewer words than controls. Right frontal patients were not impaired on either list. Right prefrontal cortex could be activated by several strategic aspects of the cued recall paradigm that were minimized in the present experiment. Brain reorganization in the lesioned patients could also account for their intact performance. The regions of prefrontal cortex activated in PET studies of young controls are not necessary for patients to perform the task.

Prefrontal and posterior cortical activation during auditory working memory

Authors:

• Linda L. Chao

• Robert T. Knight

Date: 1995

PubMed: 8813410

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Abstract:

The present study investigated brain mechanisms underlying auditory memory. In a modified Sternberg memory scanning task, 11 subjects indicated whether a probe sound was part of a previously presented 4-item memory set by a button press. Behaviorally, subjects responded fastest and most accurately to probes that matched the last memory set items and slowest and least accurately to negative probes and to positive probes to the first two memory set items. Electrophysiologically, probes to the last memory set items elicited the largest amplitude and earliest latency P3 components while other probes elicited smaller amplitude, prolonged P3s as well as a negativity around 400 ms. These results suggest that subjects utilized a trace strength/self-terminating search model to perform the memory scanning task. Subjects only generated the P3 component during the matching phase of the auditory memory task while a sustained frontal negativity was elicited during both the encoding and matching phase. Taken together these findings provide evidence of differential activation of distributed neural activity during non-linguistic auditory memory.

Human prefrontal lesions increase distractibility to irrelevant sensory inputs

Authors:

• Linda L. Chao

• Robert T. Knight

Date: 1995

PubMed: 8527724

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Abstract:

Neurological patients with focal lesions in either the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, temporal-parietal junction or the posterior hippocampus, and control subjects, were tested on a task requiring short-term retention of environmental sounds. Subjects had to indicate whether initial and subsequent test sounds were identical in two conditions. The initial and test sounds were separated by either a silent period varying from 4 to 12.6 s (no-distractor condition) or a series of irrelevant tones (distractor condition). Prefrontal patients were significantly impaired by distractors at all delays, hippocampal patients were impaired only at longer delays, while temporal-parietal patients performed similar to controls. The findings suggest that dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is crucial for gating of distracting information during delay tasks.

Escape from linear time: prefrontal cortex and conscious experience

Authors:

• Robert T. Knight

• Marcia Grabowecky

Date: 1995

Abstract:

Insights into the brain mechanisms of conscious experience are provided by the study of neurological patients / patients with prefrontal damage exhibit deficits in behaviors that are crucial for normal conscious experience / problems with inhibitory control of external sensory inputs and internal cognitive processes, coupled with abnormalities in the detection of novel events, lead to a cascade of behavioral deficits / reviews neuropsychological and neurophysiological evidence linking prefrontal cortex to these deficits and to conscious experience.

Susceptibility to memory interference effects following frontal lobe damage: findings from tests of paired-associate learning

Authors:

• Arthur P. Shimamura

• Paul J. Jurica

• Jennifer A. Mangels

• Felicia B. Gershberg

• Robert T. Knight

Date: 1995

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Abstract:

Patients with frontal lobe lesions were administered tests of paired-associate learning in which cue and response words are manipulated to increase interference across two study lists. In one test of paired-associate learning (AB-AC test), cue words used in one list are repeated in a second list but are associated with different response words (e.g., LION-HUNTER, LION-CIRCUS). In another test (AB-ABr test), words used in one list are repeated in a second list but are rearranged to form new pairs. Compared to control subjects, patients with frontal lobe lesions exhibited disproportionate impairment of second-list learning as a result of interference effects. In particular, patients exhibited the poorest performance during the initial trial of the second list, a trial in which interference effects from the first list would be most apparent. These findings suggest that the on-line control of irrelevant or competing memory associations is disrupted following frontal lobe lesions. This disruption may be indicative of an impaired gating or filtering mechanism that affects not only memory function but other cognitive function as well.

Role of prefrontal cortex in generation of the contingent negative variation

Authors:

• Steffen K. Rosahl

• Robert T. Knight

Date: 1995

PubMed: 7620289

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Abstract:

The contingent negative variation (CNV) is a brain potential generated during delay periods that has been proposed to measure prefrontal cortex (PFCx) activity. The CNV was recorded in neurological patients with PFCx damage centered in Brodmann areas 9, 44, 45, and 46 in a classical auditory S1-S2 paradigm employing a 3 sec interstimulus interval. Subjects pressed a button upon detection of an acoustically cued imperative tone (S2, 1000 Hz, GO). Responses were withheld if the warning tone (S1, 1500 Hz in GO trials) was lower in frequency (500 Hz, NOGO). The early phase of the CNV (500-700 msec after S1) was not reduced in patients with PFCx damage. PFCx lesions reduced the later phase of the CNV beginning about 1000 msec prior to S2. Reductions were maximal over PFCx sites but extended to posterior scalp electrodes over the lesioned hemisphere. The results are consistent with a late CNV generator in dorsolateral PFCx that also modulates generation of the potential in posterior regions of the ipsilateral hemisphere. The CNV findings coupled with behavioral evidence of impaired preparatory processes in these patients support the role of PFCx in sustaining distributed neural activity during delay periods.

Role of human prefrontal cortex in attention control

Authors:

• Robert T. Knight

• Marcia Grabowecky

Date: 1995

PubMed: 7771302

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Abstract:

Without a functioning dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, humans are stimulus bound and have little confidence in their ability to interact with the environment. Deficits in inhibitory control of external and internal processes coupled with impaired temporal coding of stimuli and detection capacity for novel events leave the patient functioning in a noisy internal environment without critical spatiotemporal cues. Some of these proposals are similar to those of Nauta (104). Based on connectivity of the prefrontal cortex, Nauta suggested that this region was ideally suited to generate and evaluate internal models of action. It is proposed that, in addition to this generation function, the prefrontal cortex is crucial for detecting changes in the external environment and for discriminating internally and externally derived models of the world. This chapter has described a cascade of deficits that result from damage to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Awareness of the sensory world, and of the apparent stream of internal and external events, is impaired by deficits in novelty detection. Changes in the world, internal or external, may not be noticed in a noisy internal milieu. These deficits contribute to impaired reality monitoring and to a subsequent lack of confidence in behavior. An inability to bridge temporal gaps and temporally sequence internal events, together with deficits in inhibitory control systems, contribute to an impairment in the ability to generate coherent representations of alternate or counterfactual realities.