Desmond John E, Chen S H Annabel, DeRosa Eve, Pryor Michelle R, Pfefferbaum Adolf, Sullivan Edith V
Department of Radiology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
Neuroimage. 2003 Aug;19(4):1510-20. doi: 10.1016/s1053-8119(03)00102-2.
Although there is clear evidence of alcoholism-related damage to the frontal lobes and cerebellum from neuroimaging, neuropathological, and neuropsychological studies, the functional role of the cerebellum and cerebrocerebellar circuits related to verbal working memory deficits of alcoholics have not been well studied. Alcoholic and nonalcoholic subjects performed a Sternberg verbal working memory task while receiving an fMRI scan in a 3T magnet. This task has been found in previous studies to reliably activate the articulatory control and phonological storage components of the phonological loop (left frontal, left temporal/parietal structures, right superior cerebellar regions) in young healthy controls. We hypothesized that the alcoholics would show a different pattern of activation from the controls, based on the regions of interest (ROIs) identified from a previous study of healthy subjects. Behavioral results showed the alcoholics to be performing at a comparable level to the matched controls in terms of accuracy and median reaction time, with no statistically significant differences. However, analysis of the functional data revealed that the alcoholics exhibited greater activation in the left frontal (BA44/45) and right superior cerebellum (HVI) regions relative to the matched controls. These findings suggest that brain activation in left frontal and right cerebellar regions that support the articulatory control system of verbal working memory may require a compensatory increase in alcoholics in order to maintain the same level of performance as controls.
尽管神经影像学、神经病理学和神经心理学研究都明确证明了酗酒对额叶和小脑造成的损伤，但小脑以及与酗酒者言语工作记忆缺陷相关的脑桥小脑回路的功能作用尚未得到充分研究。酗酒者和非酗酒者在3T磁场中接受功能磁共振成像扫描时，完成了一项斯特恩伯格言语工作记忆任务。在之前的研究中发现，这项任务能可靠地激活年轻健康对照组中语音回路的发音控制和语音存储组件（左额叶、左颞叶/顶叶结构、右小脑上部区域）。基于之前对健康受试者的研究确定的感兴趣区域（ROIs），我们假设酗酒者的激活模式会与对照组不同。行为结果显示，酗酒者在准确性和中位反应时间方面的表现与匹配的对照组相当，没有统计学上的显著差异。然而，对功能数据的分析表明，与匹配的对照组相比，酗酒者在左额叶（BA44/45）和右小脑上部（HVI）区域表现出更强的激活。这些发现表明，为维持与对照组相同的表现水平，酗酒者可能需要在支持言语工作记忆发音控制系统的左额叶和右小脑区域增加代偿性激活。
