Lim Hyun-Kook, Juh Rahyeong, Pae Chi-Un, Lee Byeong-Taek, Yoo Seung-Schik, Ryu Seung-Ho, Kwak Kyeong-Rin, Lee Chul, Lee Chang-Uk
Department of Psychiatry, Kangnam St. Mary's Hospital, Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Korea.
Neuropsychobiology. 2008;57(4):181-7. doi: 10.1159/000147471. Epub 2008 Jul 24.
Impaired working memory processing is one of the broad range of cognitive deficits in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). We aimed to elucidate the differences in brain activities involved in the process of working memory between AD patients and healthy comparison subjects. Twelve patients with AD were recruited along with 12 healthy volunteers as a comparison group. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was employed to assess cortical activities during the performance of a 1-back working memory paradigm using the Korean alphabet as mnemonic content. Subsequently, the difference in neural activities between the 2 groups was analyzed. The AD group performed the tasks with reduced accuracy. Group comparison analysis revealed that the AD group showed decreased brain activity in the left frontal pole (Brodmann area, BA, 10), the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (BA47), the left insula (BA13) and the right premotor cortex (BA6) compared to the control group. The AD group showed increased activation in the left precuneus (BA7) compared to the control group. A decreased level of activation in the prefrontal cortex and an increased level of activation in the parietal neural networks from the patient group may document an altered verbal working memory process in the patients with AD.
工作记忆处理受损是阿尔茨海默病（AD）患者广泛认知缺陷之一。我们旨在阐明AD患者与健康对照受试者在工作记忆过程中涉及的大脑活动差异。招募了12名AD患者以及12名健康志愿者作为对照组。采用功能磁共振成像来评估在使用韩文字母作为记忆内容的1-back工作记忆范式执行过程中的皮质活动。随后，分析两组之间神经活动的差异。AD组执行任务的准确性降低。组间比较分析显示，与对照组相比，AD组在左侧额极（布罗德曼区，BA，10）、左侧腹外侧前额叶皮质（BA47）、左侧岛叶（BA13）和右侧运动前皮质（BA6）的大脑活动减少。与对照组相比，AD组在左侧楔前叶（BA7）的激活增加。患者组前额叶皮质激活水平降低以及顶叶神经网络激活水平增加可能表明AD患者的言语工作记忆过程发生了改变。
