title: The hippocampus: a "working memory" structure? The effect of hippocampal sclerosis on working memory.
abstract: Patients with medically intractable epilepsy and either hippocampal sclerosis or frontal lobe lesions were compared with healthy controls, to investigate a possible neuroanatomical correlate of a component of working memory: the central executive. Patients were tested on a short-term memory task which comprised visuo-spatial and verbal components, in single and concurrent trials. Differences were found between the patient groups for dual-task capacity, despite being equated on single-task trials. Patients with frontal lobe damage were the most affected by the demands of attention division. The results of this study do not support the thesis of a hippocampal role in the working memory component examined, but point to a frontal lobe focus for this janusian cognitive function. An unexpected finding of an increment in performance over the trials of visuo-spatial assessment, in patients with hippocampal sclerosis, is presented.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of London, UK.
authors.forename: C M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Cowey
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Green
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention; D017034:Epilepsy, Frontal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004833:Epilepsy, Temporal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000473:pathology*; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000473:pathology*; D006801:Humans; D008131:London; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D011939:Mental Recall; D008960:Models, Psychological; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D012598:Sclerosis