Human Parietal Cortex Lesions Impact the Precision of Spatial Working Memory

Overview

Journal J Neurophysiol

Publisher American Physiological Society

Specialties Neurology
Physiology

Date 2016 Jun 17

PMID 27306678

Citations 19

Authors

Wayne E Mackey

Orrin Devinsky

Werner K Doyle

John G Golfinos

Clayton E Curtis

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The neural mechanisms that support working memory (WM) depend on persistent neural activity. Within topographically organized maps of space in dorsal parietal cortex, spatially selective neural activity persists during WM for location. However, to date, the necessity of these topographic subregions of human parietal cortex for WM remains unknown. To test the causal relationship of these areas to WM, we compared the performance of patients with lesions to topographically organized parietal cortex with those of controls on a memory-guided saccade (MGS) task as well as a visually guided saccade (VGS) task. The MGS task allowed us to measure WM precision continuously with great sensitivity, whereas the VGS task allowed us to control for any deficits in general spatial or visuomotor processing. Compared with controls, patients generated memory-guided saccades that were significantly slower and less accurate, whereas visually guided saccades were unaffected. These results provide key missing evidence for the causal role of topographic areas in human parietal cortex for WM, as well as the neural mechanisms supporting WM.

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