Working Memory in Schizophrenia as Revealed by Event-Related Potentials

2001 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Brand ◽  
Helmut Hildebrandt ◽  
Ahmet Cabuk ◽  
Jörg Zimmermann ◽  
Canan Basar-Eroglu

Abstract: In this study, we compared working memory (WM) functions for simple actions of healthy subjects and schizophrenic patients by means of behavioral and ERP measures. Healthy subjects showed a large frontal N2 amplitude in the hard WM task with updating demands of temporal sequence, but not in the easy WM and the control task. Schizophrenic patients had large frontal N2 amplitudes in all tasks without difference indicating that the patients had to activate the frontal cortex in tasks in which healthy subjects use automatized routines which do not involve the frontal cortex. Strong negative symptoms in schizophrenic patients were associated with small N2 amplitudes thus supporting the hypothesis of joint causes of cognitive and psychopathological features.

2004 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward J. Golob ◽  
Arnold Starr

It is established that recall of an item from a list of sequentially presented items is sensitive to the item's position in the memorized list. However, little is known about the brain mechanisms that mediate these serial position effects. Studies of working memory retrieval using event-related potentials report amplitude reductions during retrieval (auditory cortical N100, neocortical late positive wave [LPW]) as memory load increases. We tested the hypothesis that N100 and LPW amplitudes to probes are also affected by serial position. Eventrelated potentials were recorded from subjects performing an auditory working memory task. A set of one or five digits was memorized, then subjects classified a probe digit as either present or absent from the memory set. A control task was also given. Amplitudes of the N100 and LPW were reduced in the 5-item versus the 1-item set. In the 5-item set N100 amplitude was significantly larger for the initial (1st) serial position, relative to Positions 2–5, while linear increases in LPW amplitude were seen across serial positions (5th > 1st position). A control task without memorization showed no N100 or LPW amplitude changes with set size or serial position. The findings reveal that the N100 and LPW are influenced differently by serial position during working memory retrieval: N100 shows a primacy effect and LPW demonstrates a recency effect. The results suggest that primacy and recency effects may be mediated by different brain regions at different times during memory retrieval.


1998 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. 1275-1288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eisuke Kodama ◽  
Kiichiro Morita ◽  
Sayaka Kinoshita ◽  
Ayako Miyahira ◽  
Jun Nakamura ◽  
...  

2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Wagner ◽  
Lioba Baving ◽  
Patrick Berg ◽  
Rudolf Cohen ◽  
Brigitte Rockstroh

The processing of attended and nonattended stimuli in schizophrenic patients was examined with event-related potentials (ERPs) in a lexical decision task. In positive semantic and repetition priming the N400 amplitude did not differ between a group of 17 medicated schizophrenic patients and a group of 20 matched healthy controls. However, negative priming affected the N400 only in controls. Reaction time effects were dissociated from these ERP effects, with patients showing stronger positive priming than controls but identical negative priming. The semantic processes related to the N400 appear to be intact in schizophrenic patients, but patients seem to incorporate less context information (about the nonattended prime) in their episodic memory traces. A stronger increase of the posterior late positive complex in parallel to the stronger positive priming in schizophrenic patients may reflect relatively stronger automatic memory retrieval processes in patients.


2002 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 114-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timo Ruusuvirta ◽  
Heikki Hämäläinen

Abstract Human event-related potentials (ERPs) to a tone continuously alternating between its two spatial loci of origin (middle-standards, left-standards), to repetitions of left-standards (oddball-deviants), and to the tones originally representing these repetitions presented alone (alone-deviants) were recorded in free-field conditions. During the recordings (Fz, Cz, Pz, M1, and M2 referenced to nose), the subjects watched a silent movie. Oddball-deviants elicited a spatially diffuse two-peaked deflection of positive polarity. It differed from a deflection elicited by left-standards and commenced earlier than a prominent deflection of negative polarity (N1) elicited by alone-deviants. The results are discussed in the context of the mismatch negativity (MMN) and previous findings of dissociation between spatial and non-spatial information in auditory working memory.


2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (05) ◽  
Author(s):  
AH Neuhaus ◽  
TE Goldberg ◽  
Y Hassoun ◽  
JA Bates ◽  
KW Nassauer ◽  
...  

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 492-508 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas E. Myers ◽  
Lena Walther ◽  
George Wallis ◽  
Mark G. Stokes ◽  
Anna C. Nobre

Working memory (WM) is strongly influenced by attention. In visual WM tasks, recall performance can be improved by an attention-guiding cue presented before encoding (precue) or during maintenance (retrocue). Although precues and retrocues recruit a similar frontoparietal control network, the two are likely to exhibit some processing differences, because precues invite anticipation of upcoming information whereas retrocues may guide prioritization, protection, and selection of information already in mind. Here we explored the behavioral and electrophysiological differences between precueing and retrocueing in a new visual WM task designed to permit a direct comparison between cueing conditions. We found marked differences in ERP profiles between the precue and retrocue conditions. In line with precues primarily generating an anticipatory shift of attention toward the location of an upcoming item, we found a robust lateralization in late cue-evoked potentials associated with target anticipation. Retrocues elicited a different pattern of ERPs that was compatible with an early selection mechanism, but not with stimulus anticipation. In contrast to the distinct ERP patterns, alpha-band (8–14 Hz) lateralization was indistinguishable between cue types (reflecting, in both conditions, the location of the cued item). We speculate that, whereas alpha-band lateralization after a precue is likely to enable anticipatory attention, lateralization after a retrocue may instead enable the controlled spatiotopic access to recently encoded visual information.


2006 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ioannis A. Liappas ◽  
Charalabos C. Papageorgiou ◽  
Andreas D. Rabavilas

AbstractZolpidem is a GABA (A) agonist, which is indicated for the short-term management of insomnia. Recent research provide evidence suggesting that zolpidem produces spatial working memory (WM) deficits and dependence; however, the underlying mechanisms of these effects are unknown. Since the auditory N400 component of event-related potentials (ERPS) is considered as an index of memory use of context processing, the present study focused on N400 waveform of ERPs elicited during a WM task in a case suffering from zolpidem dependence. The patterns of N400 waveform of this case were compared to the patterns obtained from healthy controls. This comparison revealed that zolpidem dependence is accompanied by reduced amplitudes located at posterior brain areas and diffuse prolongation of N400. These findings may indicate that zolpidem dependence manifests alterations with regard to the memory use of context processing, involving or affecting a wide-ranging network of the brain's structures.


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