Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Department of Experimental Psychology and Ghent Institute for Functional and Metabolic Imaging, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000 Gent, Belgium.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2013 Jul;34(7):1530-41. doi: 10.1002/hbm.22007. Epub 2012 Feb 14.
Increases in striatal activity have been suggested to mediate training-related improvements in working-memory ability. We investigated the temporal dynamics of changes in task-related brain activity following training of working memory. Participants in an experimental group and an active control group, trained on easier tasks of a constant difficulty in shorter sessions than the experimental group, were measured before, after about 1 week, and after more than 50 days of training. In the experimental group an initial increase of working-memory related activity in the functionally defined right striatum and anatomically defined right and left putamen was followed by decreases, resulting in an inverted u-shape function that relates activity to training over time. Activity increases in the striatum developed slower in the active control group, observed at the second posttest after more than 50 days of training. In the functionally defined left striatum, initial activity increases were maintained after more extensive training and the pattern was similar for the two groups. These results shed new light on the relation between activity in the striatum (especially the putamen) and the effects of working memory training, and illustrate the importance of multiple measurements for interpreting effects of training on regional brain activity.
纹状体活动的增加被认为介导了与工作记忆能力相关的训练改善。我们研究了工作记忆训练后与任务相关的大脑活动变化的时间动态。实验组和主动对照组的参与者在训练前、大约 1 周后和 50 多天后进行了测量，他们在较短的时间内接受了比实验组更容易的恒定难度任务的训练。在实验组中，与工作记忆相关的右侧纹状体和解剖学定义的右侧和左侧壳核的活动最初增加，随后减少，导致活动与随时间推移的训练之间呈倒 U 形函数关系。纹状体中的活动增加在主动对照组中发展较慢，在 50 多天的训练后第二次测试后才观察到。在功能定义的左侧纹状体中，初始活动增加在更广泛的训练后得以维持，两组的模式相似。这些结果为纹状体（特别是壳核）活动与工作记忆训练效果之间的关系提供了新的认识，并说明了对区域大脑活动进行多次测量以解释训练效果的重要性。
