Cortical and white matter substrates supporting visuospatial working memory

Abstract

As school challenges intensify, they commonly increase in complexity. In tasks involving new visuospatial information, we rely on working memory, supported by a distributed brain network. We investigated the dynamic interplay between brain regions, including cortical and white matter structures, to understand how neural interactions change with different memory loads and trials, and their subsequent impact on working memory performance. Patients undertook a task of immediate spatial recall during intracranial EEG monitoring. We charted the dynamics of cortical high-gamma activity and associated functional connectivity modulations in white matter tracts. Elevated memory loads were linked to enhanced functional connectivity via occipital longitudinal tracts, yet decreased through arcuate, uncinate, and superior-longitudinal fasciculi. As task familiarity grew, there was increased high-gamma activity in the posterior inferior-frontal gyrus (pIFG) and diminished functional connectivity across a network encompassing frontal, parietal, and temporal lobes. Notably, early pIFG high-gamma activity was predictive of successful recall. Including this metric in a logistic regression model yielded an accuracy of 0.76. In summary, optimizing visuospatial working memory through practice is tied to early pIFG activation and decreased dependence on irrelevant neural pathways.