A functional magnetic resonance imaging study on digital working memory task

Objective To investigate activated brain regions in healthy volunteers during digital working memory task by functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI)technique.Methods Twelve right-handed volunteers were subjected to digital working memory test and fMRI.Block-design,memory task and control task were adopted in the experiment alternatively.SPM 99 was used to analyze the data and locate the activated brain regions.Results The Brodmann Area(BA)6/9/46 in the frontal lobe,the BA 7/40 in the parietal lobe,bilateral hippocampus,cingulate gyrus,thalamus,the caudate nucleus and the cerebellum were activated during the task(P0.01).However,the frontal lobe and the parietal lobe were activated with the remarkable left predominance and the frontal lobe with left predominance was the most activated region during the digital working memory task.Conclusion In human brain,the left frontal lobe plays an important role in manipulating the information of the digital working memory.Other cortex and some subcortex regions are also indispensable in the process.