Brain activation and deactivation during location and color working memory tasks in 11-13-year-old children.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and n-back tasks we investigated whether, in 11-13-year-old children, spatial (location) and nonspatial (color) information is differentially processed during visual attention (0-back) and working memory (WM) (2-back) tasks and whether such cognitive task performance, compared to a resting state, results in regional deactivation. The location 0-back task, compared to the color 0-back task, activated segregated areas in the frontal, parietal and occipital cortices whereas no differentially activated voxels were obtained when location and color 2-back tasks were directly contrasted. Several midline cortical areas were less active during 0- and 2-back task performance than resting state. The task-induced deactivation increased with task difficulty as demonstrated by larger deactivation during 2-back than 0-back tasks. The results suggest that, in 11-13-year-old children, the visual attentional network is differently recruited by spatial and nonspatial information processing, but the functional organization of cortical activation in WM in this age group is not based on the type of information processed. Furthermore, 11-13-year-old children exhibited a similar pattern of cortical deactivation that has been reported in adults during cognitive task performance compared to a resting state.
Vuontela
Virve
V
Neuroscience Unit, Institute of Biomedicine/Physiology, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, P.O. Box 63, FIN-00014, Helsinki, Finland. virve.vuontela@helsinki.fi
Steenari
Maija-Riikka
MR
Aronen
Eeva T
ET
Korvenoja
Antti
A
Aronen
Hannu J
HJ
Carlson
Synnöve
S
D000293:Adolescent; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002648:Child; D003116:Color; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*