Involvement of the cerebellar cortex and nuclei in verbal and visuospatial working memory: A 7T fMRI study

Thürling, Markus; Hautzel, Hubertus; Küper, Michael; Stefanescu, Maria R.; Maderwald, Stefan; Ladd, Mark E.; Timmann, Dagmar

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.05.037

Cited by 62 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…45 In addition, verbal working memory tasks similar to ours have been shown in fMRI studies to activate cerebellar regions during encoding and maintenance operations. 46,47 Our study broadly extends these data by revealing the temporal dynamics of working memory encoding, indicating that α oscillations emerge in the left supramarginal and prefrontal cortices by 600 ms following presentation of the encoding set, and that activity is largely sustained in these brain regions throughout the remaining encoding phase and into the maintenance phase. We propose that such sustained oscillatory activity in these brain regions reflects continuous processing in Baddeley's phonological loop and executive functioning, as participants are engaged in transforming the visual stimuli into a memory representation and then maintaining the representation through rehearsal.…”

Section: Brain Network Serving Working Memory Processingsupporting

confidence: 75%

Male veterans with PTSD exhibit aberrant neural dynamics during working memory processing: an MEG study

McDermott

Badura-Brack

Becker

et al. 2016

jpn

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IntroductionPosttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric disorder characterized by re-experiencing, avoidance, negative alterations in mood and cognition, and physiologic arousal symptoms, which may develop subsequent to a traumatic event (e.g., combat).1,2 The lifetime prevalence of PTSD in the United States is roughly 7%-9%; 3,4 however, prevalence rates among recent combat veterans are estimated at 13%-22%. 5,6 Previous studies have demonstrated that patients with PTSD experience deficits in memory, attention and executive functioning. [7][8][9] More specifically, a recent meta-analysis of 60 neurocognitive studies comparing patients with PTSD to healthy controls (4108 participants) found the largest effect sizes reflecting deficiencies in the PTSD group for verbal learning, information processing speed and attention/working memory. 10 The etiology of these functional deficits is not entirely clear, but they do appear to be contributing factors to PTSD symptomatology. 11,12Working memory is an essential component of information processing and is typically divided into 3 cognitive subprocesses: encoding, maintenance and retrieval.13 Studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography 14 have identified the network architecture serving working memory processing in healthy adults. Critical brain regions include the prefrontal cortex, superior parietal lobule and adjacent areas, lateral occipital regions, cerebellum, and the left supramarginal gyrus and contiguous temporal regions.14,15 While such studies elucidate brain regions responsible for general working memory function, they rely on indirect measures of brain activity (e.g., local blood oxygenation), making it difficult to dissociate which areas are active during each phase of working memory. Background: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with executive functioning deficits, including disruptions in working memory. In this study, we examined the neural dynamics of working memory processing in veterans with PTSD and a matched healthy control sample using magnetoencephalography (MEG). Methods: Our sample of recent combat veterans with PTSD and demographically matched participants without PTSD completed a working memory task during a 306-sensor MEG recording. The MEG data were preprocessed and transformed into the time-frequency domain. Significant oscillatory brain responses were imaged using a beamforming approach to identify spatiotemporal dynamics. Results: Fifty-one men were included in our analyses: 27 combat veterans with PTSD and 24 controls. Across all participants, a dynamic wave of neural activity spread from posterior visual cortices to left frontotemporal regions during encoding, consistent with a verbal working memory task, and was sustained throughout maintenance. Differences related to PTSD emerged during early encoding, with patients exhibiting stronger α oscillatory responses than controls in the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Differences spread to the right supramarginal ...

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Section: Brain Network Serving Working Memory Processingsupporting

confidence: 75%

Male veterans with PTSD exhibit aberrant neural dynamics during working memory processing: an MEG study

McDermott

Badura-Brack

Becker

et al. 2016

jpn

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The n-back tasks for verbal and abstract stimuli were conducted using a block design in separate fMRI runs in close accordance to our prior study [14]. A total of 20 stimuli were visually presented one at a time over a total interval of 30 s. The stimulus presentation time was 1300 ms with an inter-stimulus interval (ISI) of 200 ms in which a central fixation cross was presented.…”

Section: N-back Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, bilateral activation of the cerebellar cortex was found during an n-back working memory task without evidence of lateralization regardless of verbal or abstract visual content [13,14]. It was concluded that the bilateral activation pattern is best explained by a contribution to the central executive.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Cerebellar fMRI Activation Increases with Increasing Working Memory Demands

et al. 2015

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The aim of the present study was to explore cerebellar contributions to the central executive in n-back working memory tasks using 7-T functional magnetic imaging (fMRI). We hypothesized that cerebellar activation increased with increasing working memory demands. Activations of the cerebellar cortex and dentate nuclei were compared between 0-back (serving as a motor control task), 1-back, and 2-back working memory tasks for both verbal and abstract modalities. A block design was used. Data of 27 participants (mean age 26.6 ± 3.8 years, female/male 12:15) were included in group statistical analysis. We observed that cerebellar cortical activations increased with higher central executive demands in n-back tasks independent of task modality. As confirmed by subtraction analyses, additional bilateral activations following higher executive demands were found primarily in four distinct cerebellar areas: (i) the border region of lobule VI and crus I, (ii) inferior parts of the lateral cerebellum (lobules crus II, VIIb, VIII, IX), (iii) posterior parts of the paravermal cerebellar cortex (lobules VI, crus I, crus II), and (iv) the inferior vermis (lobules VI, VIIb, VIII, IX). Dentate activations were observed for both verbal and abstract modalities. Task-related increases were less robust and detected for the verbal n-back tasks only. These results provide further evidence that the cerebellum participates in an amodal bilateral neuronal network representing the central executive during working memory n-back tasks.

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“…The functional imaging data were analysed using SPM8 (Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neurology, London, UK) and MATLAB R2011b (Mathworks Inc., Natick, MA, USA) as described in more detail in Thürling et al [30,31]. Slice timing correction was applied [32].…”

Section: Imaging Data Acquisition and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Cerebellar Contribution to Context Processing in Extinction Learning and Recall

et al. 2015

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Whereas acquisition of new associations is considered largely independent of the context, context dependency is a hallmark of extinction of the learned associations. The hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex are known to be involved in context processing during extinction learning and recall. Although the cerebellum has known functional and anatomic connections to the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex, cerebellar contributions to context processing of extinction have rarely been studied. In the present study, we reanalyzed functional brain imaging data (fMRI) of previous work investigating context effects during extinction in a cognitive associative learning paradigm in 28 young and healthy subjects (Lissek et al. Neuroimage. 81:131-3, 2013). In that study, event-related fMRI analysis did not include the cerebellum. The 3 T fMRI dataset was reanalyzed using a spatial normalization method optimized for the cerebellum. Data of seven participants had to be excluded because the cerebellum had not been scanned in full. Cerebellar activation related to context change during extinction learning was most prominent in lobule Crus II bilaterally (p<0.01, t>2.53; partially corrected by predetermined cluster size). No significant cerebellar activations were observed related to context change during extinction retrieval. The posterolateral cerebellum appears to contribute to context-related processes during extinction learning, but not (or less) during extinction retrieval. The cerebellum may support context learning during extinction via its connections to the hippocampus. Alternatively, the cerebellum may support the shifting of attention to the context via its known connections to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Because the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is critically involved in context-related processes during extinction retrieval, and there are no known connections between the cerebellum and the vmPFC, the cerebellum may be less important during extinction recall.

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Involvement of the cerebellar cortex and nuclei in verbal and visuospatial working memory: A 7T fMRI study

Cited by 62 publications

References 40 publications

Male veterans with PTSD exhibit aberrant neural dynamics during working memory processing: an MEG study

Male veterans with PTSD exhibit aberrant neural dynamics during working memory processing: an MEG study

Cerebellar fMRI Activation Increases with Increasing Working Memory Demands

Cerebellar Contribution to Context Processing in Extinction Learning and Recall

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