Role of the Parietal Lobes in Cognition of the Spatial Memory in Healthy Volunteers

Objective: To investigate the role of the parietal lobes in healthy volunteers during short-term spatial memory task by functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI) technique. Methods: Ten right-handed healthy volunteers participated in a test of short-term spatial memory task,while the fMRI data were recorded. A control task was performed for the block-design. SPM 99 was used to analyze the data and to obtain the activated brain regions. Results: When the threshold was set as P 0.001,the brain cortex areas including the bilateral precuneus lobules and superior lobules as well as supramarginal gyrus of the parietal lobe(BA7/40),the bilateral superior,middle and inferior gyrus of the prefrontal lobe(BA6/9/47),the bilateral occipitotemporal lobes(BA17/18/19/37),the right parahippocampal gyrus and the right cingulated gyrus were activated during the task. The strongest brightness of all activated areas was the left parietal lobe. There was a significant difference in activated intensity between the left parietal lobe and the bilateral prefrontal lobes(P 0.05);meanwhile,the right parietal lobe and the left prefrontal lobe were also showed a significant difference in activated brightness(P 0.05). Conclusion: In human brain,the parietal lobes play a crucial role in manipulating the information of the short-term spatial memory.