Kumar Sanjay, Rao Shobini L, Chandramouli Bangalore A, Pillai Shibu
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Clin Neurol Neurosurg. 2013 Aug;115(8):1326-32. doi: 10.1016/j.clineuro.2012.12.038. Epub 2013 Jan 30.
Mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) is associated with often selective impairment of both working memory (WM) and the executive functions (EFs). Research indicates that one of the commonest deficits present in MTBI patients falls in the domain of WM. We aimed to investigate the role of EFs in WM impairment following MTBI.
Performance on the tests of EFs and the verbal and visuo-spatial WM of 30 consecutive MTBI patients were compared with age/education/IQ matched 30 normal healthy control participants. Correlation between EFs and WM was studied separately for the MTBI and the control group.
The MTBI and control group were tested on a range of EF tests and WM. The MTBI group was demonstrated impairment on verbal and visuo-spatial WM and category fluency tests only. Furthermore, the MTBI group had fewer significant correlations between the WM and EFs (5 out of 54 possible correlations) than in the control group (13 out of 54 possible correlations).
We suggest that MTBI may lead to WM deficits as the contribution of executive processes to support the WM is diminished following MTBI. Such an understanding of the poor WM performance in MTBI patients will be helpful when planning appropriate strategies for cognitive rehabilitation.
轻度创伤性脑损伤（MTBI）常与工作记忆（WM）和执行功能（EFs）的选择性损害相关。研究表明，MTBI患者中最常见的缺陷之一存在于WM领域。我们旨在研究EFs在MTBI后WM损害中的作用。
将30例连续的MTBI患者在EFs测试以及言语和视觉空间WM测试中的表现与年龄、教育程度、智商相匹配的30名正常健康对照参与者进行比较。分别研究MTBI组和对照组中EFs与WM之间的相关性。
对MTBI组和对照组进行了一系列EF测试和WM测试。MTBI组仅在言语和视觉空间WM以及类别流畅性测试中表现出损害。此外，MTBI组中WM与EFs之间的显著相关性（54种可能的相关性中有5种）少于对照组（54种可能的相关性中有13种）。
我们认为，MTBI可能导致WM缺陷，因为MTBI后支持WM的执行过程的作用减弱。对MTBI患者WM表现不佳的这种理解在规划适当的认知康复策略时将有所帮助。
