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The Journal of Neuroscience, April 30, 2008, 28(18):4818-4822; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0710-08.2008

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Working Memory and the Organization of Brain Systems

Yael Shrager,¹ Daniel A. Levy,² Ramona O. Hopkins,³ and Larry R. Squire⁴

¹University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, ²Weizmann Institute of Science, Rechovot 76100, Israel, ³Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 84602, and ⁴Veterans Affairs Healthcare System, San Diego, California 92161

Correspondence should be addressed to Larry R. Squire at the above address. Email: lsquire{at}ucsd.edu

Working memory has historically been viewed as an active maintenance process that is independent of long-term memory and independent of the medial temporal lobe. However, impaired performance across brief time intervals has sometimes been described in amnesic patients with medial temporal lobe damage. These findings raise a fundamental question about how to know when performance depends on working memory and when the capacity for working memory has been exceeded and performance depends on long-term memory. We describe a method for identifying working memory independently of patient performance. We compared patients with medial temporal lobe damage to controls who were given either distraction or no distraction between study and test. In four experiments, we found concordance between the performance of patients and the effect of distraction on controls. The patients were impaired on tasks in which distraction had minimal effect on control performance, and the patients were intact on tasks in which distraction disrupted control performance. We suggest that the patients were impaired when the task minimally depended on working memory (and instead depended substantially on long-term memory), and they performed well when the task depended substantially on working memory. These findings support the conclusion that working memory (active maintenance) is intact after medial temporal lobe damage.

Key words: amnesia; hippocampal function; hippocampus; memory; working memory; long-term memory

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Received Jan. 17, 2008; revised March 14, 2008; accepted March 28, 2008.

Correspondence should be addressed to Larry R. Squire at the above address. Email: lsquire{at}ucsd.edu

This article has been cited by other articles:

				Y. Shrager, C. B. Kirwan, and L. R. Squire Neural basis of the cognitive map: Path integration does not require hippocampus or entorhinal cortex PNAS, August 19, 2008; 105(33): 12034 - 12038. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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