Inoue Masato, Mikami Akichika
Department of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Kanrin, Inuyama, Aichi, Japan.
J Neurophysiol. 2007 Oct;98(4):1965-74. doi: 10.1152/jn.00911.2006. Epub 2007 Jul 25.
We compared neuronal activities in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) and the inferior temporal cortex (IT) during the retrieval of an object from the working memory. About one third of IT neurons showed color- and target-selective (CT) or target-selective (T) response during the color cue period of the serial probe reproduction (SPR) task. These object-selective (CT and T) responses in IT could be correlated with the retrieval process of an object from the memorized multiple objects because no objects were presented during this period. However, proportion of CT and T responses was smaller in IT than in VLPFC, where two thirds of neurons showed object-selective response. In addition, object-selective response started earlier in VLPFC than in IT. These results suggest that VLPFC retrieves particular object information from the working memory and sends the retrieved object information to IT. The fact that the responses in the error trials did not decrease in IT suggests that IT is not a critical area for the retrieval process from the working memory.
我们比较了在从工作记忆中检索物体时腹外侧前额叶皮层（VLPFC）和颞下皮层（IT）的神经元活动。在系列探针再现（SPR）任务的颜色提示期，约三分之一的IT神经元表现出颜色和目标选择性（CT）或目标选择性（T）反应。在此期间没有呈现物体，因此IT中的这些物体选择性（CT和T）反应可能与从记忆的多个物体中检索物体的过程相关。然而，IT中CT和T反应的比例低于VLPFC，VLPFC中有三分之二的神经元表现出物体选择性反应。此外，VLPFC中的物体选择性反应比IT中开始得更早。这些结果表明，VLPFC从工作记忆中检索特定物体信息，并将检索到的物体信息发送到IT。IT中错误试验的反应没有减少这一事实表明，IT不是工作记忆检索过程的关键区域。
