Getting a grasp on working memory
Wickelgren, I.
Science 275(5306): 1580-1582
1997
ISSN/ISBN: 0036-8075 PMID: 9072824 Document Number: 472178
Part of a special section on cognitive neuroscience. Recent studies are starting to reveal how various brain areas work together and produce working memory. Working memory is an erasable mental blackboard that operates over mere seconds and allows the mind to briefly hold and manipulate the information essential for comprehension, reasoning, and planning. Evidence from studies using positron emission tomography suggests there are separate circuits for spatial, object, and verbal working memory in the human brain. Nonetheless, a stream of studies now supports a hypothesis, more than two decades old, that the working memory needs cooperation among scattered areas of the brain. Recent findings indicate that the prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain associated with higher functions such as memory and learning, is the true orchestrator of working memory.