Goethals Ingeborg, Audenaert Kurt, Jacobs Filip, Van De Wiele Christophe, Vermeir Griet, Vandierendonck André, Van Heeringen Cees, Dierckx Rudi
Division of Nuclear Medicine, Ghent University Hospital, Belgium.
J Nucl Med. 2002 Nov;43(11):1426-31.
The concept of working memory is central to theories of human cognition, because it is essential to human skills such as decision making and deductive reasoning. Although PET and functional MRI have provided robust data on the recruitment of specific pathways in working memory tasks, the experimental settings of these studies may not be transferable to a clinical situation. Hence, to develop neuropsychological SPECT activation probes that are suitable for daily clinical practice, this study reports on a neuropsychological activation task of spatial working memory under classical neuropsychological test conditions in healthy subjects.
Reaction times and accuracy were measured as behavioral parameters and functional imaging data were analyzed with statistical parametric mapping to determine significant voxel-wise changes between the perception task and the memory task.
Subjects reacted more slowly and performed less accurately during the memory task compared with the perception task, findings that are in keeping with other neuropsychological studies. Also, the overall pattern of brain activations revealed in our experiment is consistent with the data of the literature, thereby validating our test probe.
From a practical viewpoint, the close resemblance of the test conditions of the SPECT procedure with those of the investigation room and the relative simplicity of the task under study probably constitute major advantages for future clinical application of the SPECT procedure in patients with cognitive impairments.
工作记忆的概念是人类认知理论的核心，因为它对于诸如决策和演绎推理等人类技能至关重要。尽管正电子发射断层扫描（PET）和功能磁共振成像（fMRI）已提供了关于工作记忆任务中特定通路激活的有力数据，但这些研究的实验设置可能无法直接应用于临床情况。因此，为了开发适用于日常临床实践的神经心理学单光子发射计算机断层扫描（SPECT）激活探针，本研究报告了在健康受试者的经典神经心理学测试条件下进行的空间工作记忆神经心理学激活任务。
测量反应时间和准确性作为行为参数，并使用统计参数映射分析功能成像数据，以确定感知任务和记忆任务之间体素水平的显著变化。
与感知任务相比，受试者在记忆任务中的反应更慢，表现也更不准确，这一结果与其他神经心理学研究一致。此外，我们实验中揭示的大脑激活总体模式与文献数据一致，从而验证了我们的测试探针。
从实际角度来看，SPECT程序的测试条件与检查室的条件非常相似，且所研究任务相对简单，这可能是SPECT程序未来在认知障碍患者临床应用中的主要优势。
