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| Volume 288, Number 5471 Issue of 2 Jun 2000, pp.
1656 - 1660 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/288/5471/1656
The Prefrontal Cortex: Response Selection or Maintenance Within
Working Memory? James B. Rowe, Ivan Toni, 2 Oliver Josephs, Richard
S. J. Frackowiak, Richard E. Passingham
It is controversial whether the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
is involved in the maintenance of items in working memory or in
the selection of responses. We used event-related functional magnetic
resonance imaging to study the performance of a spatial working
memory task by humans. We distinguished the maintenance of spatial
items from the selection of an item from memory to guide a response.
Selection, but not maintenance, was associated with activation
of prefrontal area 46 of the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex.
In contrast, maintenance was associated with activation of prefrontal
area 8 and the intraparietal cortex. The results support a role
for the dorsal prefrontal cortex in the selection of representations.
This accounts for the fact that this area is activated both when
subjects select between items on working memory tasks and when
they freely select between movements on tasks of willed action.
1 Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neurology, Institute of Neurology,
12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK. 2 Institut für Medizin,
Forschungszentrum Jülich, D-52425 Jülich, Germany.
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: j.rowe@fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk |
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