Anatomy of the episodic buffer

Autor(en)

M. Berlingeri, G. Bottini, S. Basilico, G. Silani, G. Zanardi, M. Sberna, N. Colombo, R. Sterzi, G. Scialfa, E. Paulesu

Abstrakt

In 2000 Baddeley proposed the existence of a new component of working memory, the episodic buffer, which should contribute to the on-line maintenance of integrated memory traces. The author assumed that this component should be critical for immediate recall of a short story that exceeds the capacity of the phonological store. Accordingly, patients with Alzheimer's dementia (AD) should suffer of a deficit of the episodic buffer when immediate recall of a short story is impossible. On the other hand, the episodic buffer should be somewhat preserved in such patients when some IR can occur (Baddeley and Wilson, 2002). We adopted this logic for a voxel-based morphometry study. We compared the distribution of grey-matter density of two such groups of AD patients with and of a group of age-matched controls. We found that both AD groups had a significant atrophy of the left mid-hippocampus; on the other hand, the anterior part of the hippocampus was significantly more atrophic in patients who were also impaired on the immediate prose recall task. Six out of ten patients with no immediate recall were spared at "central executive" tasks. Taken together our findings suggest that the left anterior hippocampus contributes to the episodic buffer of the revised working memory model. We also suggest that the episodic buffer is somewhat independent from the central executive component of working memory.

Organisation(en)

Externe Organisation(en)

Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Niguarda Ca' Granda Hospital, Università degli studi di Pavia

Journal

Behavioural Neurology: an international journal on the relationship between disordered human behavior and underlying biological mechanisms

Band

19

Seiten

29-34

Anzahl der Seiten

6

ISSN

0953-4180

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1155/2008/828937

Publikationsdatum

2008

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

301402 Neurobiologie

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology, Allgemeine Neurowissenschaft

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/db3818e8-8dd0-476f-a451-a85dce96b011