The contribution of acetylcholine and dopamine to subprocesses of visual working memory – What patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment and Parkinson׳s disease can tell us

J, Blatt; Vellage, Anne; Baier, Bernhard; Müller, Notger G.

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.06.013

Cited by 10 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…It is possible that there are separable corticostriatal loops or a different neural mechanism altogether that filters distraction during encoding and maintenance. Similar to the current study, previous studies finding support for PFC-BG mediated gating have all presented distractors during encoding (Blatt, Vellage, Baier, & Müller, 2014;Lee et al, 2010;McNab & Klingberg, 2008;Baier et al, 2010) or both encoding and maintenance (Cools et al, 2010). It is possible that PFC-BG gating is primarily important when WM must be updated with task-relevant items rather than when distractors are presented alone during a delay interval.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 80%

The nature of working memory gating in Parkinson’s disease: A multi-domain signal detection examination

Uitvlugt

Pleskac

Ravizza

2015

Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci

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Distractions are ubiquitous; our brains are inundated with task-irrelevant information. Thus, to remember successfully, one must actively maintain relevant information and prevent distraction from entering working memory. Researchers suggest the basal ganglia-prefrontal pathways are vital to this process by acting as a working memory gate. Using Parkinson's disease as a model of frontostriatal functioning and with signal detection analyses, the present study aims to better characterize the contribution of frontostriatal pathways of this gating process and to determine how it operates across multiple domains. To achieve this, Parkinson's disease patients and healthy controls completed verbal and spatial working memory tasks consisting of three conditions: low-load without distraction; low-load with distraction; and high-load without distraction. Patients were tested both ON and OFF dopaminergic medication, allowing for assessment of the contribution of dorsal and ventral frontostriatal pathways. The results demonstrate that when medication is withheld, Parkinson's patients have a response bias to answer "NO" across all conditions and domains, supporting our hypothesis that the basal ganglia-prefrontal pathways allow or prevent updates of working memory. Contrastingly, medication status affects d' in the distraction condition but not in the high- or low-load conditions. We attribute this to stimulus valuation processes that were impaired by dopaminergic medication overdosing the ventral pathway. These findings are both consistent with the hypothesis that the working memory gate filters spatial and verbal information before it enters into the working memory system, adding support for the gate being a domain-general mechanism of the central executive.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 80%

The nature of working memory gating in Parkinson’s disease: A multi-domain signal detection examination

Uitvlugt

Pleskac

Ravizza

2015

Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci

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“…The first probably signals an impending breakdown of the storage process, whereas the latter constitutes a compensational mechanism that guaranteed completely intact filtering behavior. Behavioral data also indicated that the high load storage task was more difficult than the filtering task, a confounder that usually cannot be avoided in the type of tasks used here and, therefore, has routinely emerged in prior studies as well (e.g., McNab and Klingberg, 2007 ; Blatt et al, 2014 ). Hence, the differences in hemodynamic responses between the filter and the storage contrast may not solely reflect the specific challenges of the two processes but may have been driven by task difficulty, too.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 77%

“…For analysis of the behavioral data we first calculated scores for filtering and storage, respectively. This was done by subtracting the percentage correct of the HL condition from percentage correct in the LL condition (storage score) and accuracy measures of the LLDIS condition from the LL condition (filter score; Blatt et al, 2014 ). The advantage of the scores over raw data (hit rates) is that a potential overall deficit is canceled out by this subtraction method.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Neurological diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's which are characterized by the degeneration of certain brain regions have been used previously for making inferences about the affected brain regions' contribution to WM and attention (Finke et al, 2013 ; Blatt et al, 2014 ). With regard to the PFC, ALS can be considered a potential model (Iwanaga et al, 1997 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Working Memory Network Changes in ALS: An fMRI Study

et al. 2016

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We used amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) as a model of prefrontal dysfunction in order to re-assess the potential neuronal substrates of two sub processes of working memory, namely information storage and filtering. To date it is unclear which exact neuronal networks sustain these two processes and the prefrontal cortex was suggested to play a crucial role both for filtering out of irrelevant information and for the storage of relevant information in memory. Other research has attributed information storage to more posterior brain regions, including the parietal cortex and stressed the role of subcortical areas in information filtering. We studied 14 patients suffering from ALS and the same number of healthy controls in an fMRI-task that allowed calculating separate storage and filtering scores. A brain volume analysis confirmed prefrontal atrophy in the patient group. Regarding their performance in the working memory task, we observed a trend toward slightly impaired storage capabilities whereas filtering appeared completely intact. Despite the rather subtle behavioral deficits we observed marked changes in neuronal activity associated with ALS: Compared to healthy controls patients showed significantly reduced hemodynamic responses in the left occipital cortex and right prefrontal cortex in the storage contrast. The filter contrast on the other hand revealed a relative hyperactivation in the superior frontal gyrus of the ALS patients. This hyperactivation might reflect a possible compensational mechanism for the prefrontal degeneration found in ALS. The reduced hemodynamic responses in the storage contrast might reflect a disruption of prefrontal top-down control of posterior brain regions, a process which was especially relevant in the most difficult high load memory task. Taken together, the present study demonstrates marked neurophysiological changes in ALS patients compared to healthy controls during the filtering and storage of information in spite of largely intact behavior. With respect to the neuronal substrates of the two working memory processes under investigation here, the results suggest that it is rather the degree to which top-down control is required for task completion that determines prefrontal cortex involvement than the specific nature of the process, i.e., storage vs. filtering.

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“…Although some cognitive deficits do exist in the early stages of the disease interfering executive functions, working memory, and visuospatial functioning [ 5 , 6 ], more pronounced neurocognitive disorders (NCDs) may develop as the disease progresses [ 7 , 8 ]. These neuropsychological deficits are partly related to the dysfunction of dopaminergic frontostriatal circuits [ 9 , 10 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing Sensitivity and Specificity of Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination-I, III and Mini-Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination in Parkinson’s Disease

Lucza

Ascherman

Kovács

et al. 2018

Behavioural Neurology

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Background Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder characterized by numerous motor and nonmotor symptoms. Neurocognitive disorders (NCD) are one of the most troublesome problems and their diagnosis is often challenging. Methods We compared the sensitivity and specificity of several versions of Addenbrooke Cognitive Examination (ACE, ACE-III, and Mini-ACE) on 552 subjects with PD. Normal cognition, mild and major NCD were judged in accordance with the respective criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th edition. Subsequently, we applied the receiver operation characteristic (ROC) analysis in comparison of different education levels. Results For subjects with education level 0–8 and 9–12 years, the ACE-III had the best discriminating capabilities for mild NCD (cut-off scores: 83.5 and 85.5 points, respectively), while Mini-ACE was the best for subjects having education > 12 years (cut-off score: 25.5 points). For detecting major NCD, ACE-III had the best diagnostic accuracy in all levels of education (cut-off scores: 70.5, 77.5, and 78.5 points for subjects having education level 0–8, 9–12, and >12 years, respectively). Conclusion ACE-III and its nested version, the Mini-ACE, had the best screening abilities for detecting mild and major NCD in PD.

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The contribution of acetylcholine and dopamine to subprocesses of visual working memory – What patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment and Parkinson׳s disease can tell us

Cited by 10 publications

References 53 publications

The nature of working memory gating in Parkinson’s disease: A multi-domain signal detection examination

The nature of working memory gating in Parkinson’s disease: A multi-domain signal detection examination

Working Memory Network Changes in ALS: An fMRI Study

Comparing Sensitivity and Specificity of Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination-I, III and Mini-Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination in Parkinson’s Disease

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