Sandrini Marco, Cappa Stefano F, Rossi Simone, Rossini Paolo M, Miniussi Carlo
IRCCS S. Giovanni di Dio--FBF Brescia, Italy.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2003 Aug 15;15(6):855-61. doi: 10.1162/089892903322370771.
Long-term, episodic memory processing is supposed to involve the prefrontal cortex asymmetrically. Here we investigate the role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in encoding and retrieval of semantically related or unrelated word pairs. Subjects were required to perform a task consisting of two parts: a study phase (encoding), in which word pairs were presented, and a test phase (retrieval), during which stimuli previously presented had to be recognized among other stimuli. Consistently with our previous findings using pictures, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) had a significant impact on episodic memory. The performance was significantly disrupted when rTMS was applied to the left or right DLPFC during encoding, and to the right DLPFC in retrieval, but only for unrelated word pairs. These results indicate that the nature of the material to be remembered interacts with the encoding-retrieval DLPFC asymmetry; moreover, the crucial role of DLPFC is evident only for novel stimuli.
长期的情景记忆处理被认为不对称地涉及前额叶皮层。在此，我们研究背外侧前额叶皮层（DLPFC）在语义相关或不相关单词对的编码和检索中的作用。受试者被要求执行一项由两部分组成的任务：一个学习阶段（编码），在此阶段呈现单词对；一个测试阶段（检索），在此期间必须在其他刺激中识别先前呈现的刺激。与我们之前使用图片的研究结果一致，重复经颅磁刺激（rTMS）对情景记忆有显著影响。当在编码期间将rTMS应用于左侧或右侧DLPFC，以及在检索期间应用于右侧DLPFC时，表现会显著受到干扰，但仅针对不相关的单词对。这些结果表明，要记忆的材料的性质与编码-检索DLPFC不对称相互作用；此外，DLPFC的关键作用仅在新刺激中才明显。
