Barriga-Paulino Catarina I, Rodríguez-Martínez Elena I, Arjona Antonio, Morales Manuel, Gómez Carlos M
Human Psychobiology Laboratory, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Seville, Spain.
Human Psychobiology Laboratory, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Seville, Spain.
Neuropsychologia. 2017 Jan 27;95:215-226. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.12.026. Epub 2016 Dec 23.
Working memory is an important cognitive function, and it is crucial to better understand its neurophysiological mechanisms. The developmental trajectories of the Event Related Potentials related to this important function have hardly been studied. However, these ERPs may provide some clues about the individual state of maturation, as has been demonstrated for anatomical brain images. The present study aims to determine the behavioral and neurophysiological development of Working Memory (WM) processes. For this purpose, 170 subjects with ages ranging from 6 to 26 years performed a visual Delayed Match-to-Sample task (DMTS). The RTs, total errors, and Event Related Potentials (ERPs) in the phases of encoding, retention, and matching were obtained. Results revealed a decrease in the amplitude of ERPs with age, paralleled by improved performance on the DMTS task (i.e., shorter RTs and fewer errors). None of these variables were affected by gender. To determine whether memory performance was influenced by the individual pattern of maturation beyond age, the amplitude of the different ERP components was correlated with RT and errors on the WM task after removing the effect of age. Frontal N2 and posterior P1 and the Late Positive Component were the only ERPs that presented significant correlations with behavioral errors. Behavioral performance was predicted by age and by the scores on the first component extracted from Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of the ERPs. Age (under 17 years old) explained 85.04% and the PCA component explained 14.96% of the variance explained by the bivariate model predicting behavioral errors (1/age + scores of 1st PCA component). From the age of 17 on, the principal PCA component ceases to be an independent component predicting error performance. The results suggest that the individual maturation of ERP components seems to be of particular importance in controlling behavioral errors in WM, as measured by the DMTS.
工作记忆是一项重要的认知功能，更好地理解其神经生理机制至关重要。与这一重要功能相关的事件相关电位（ERP）的发育轨迹几乎未被研究过。然而，正如在大脑解剖图像中所证实的那样，这些ERP可能会提供一些有关个体成熟状态的线索。本研究旨在确定工作记忆（WM）过程的行为和神经生理发展。为此，170名年龄在6至26岁之间的受试者进行了视觉延迟匹配样本任务（DMTS）。获得了编码、保持和匹配阶段的反应时间（RTs）、总错误数以及事件相关电位（ERPs）。结果显示，随着年龄增长，ERP的振幅降低，同时DMTS任务的表现有所改善（即RTs更短，错误更少）。这些变量均不受性别的影响。为了确定记忆表现是否受到年龄以外的个体成熟模式的影响，在去除年龄影响后，将不同ERP成分的振幅与WM任务中的RT和错误进行了相关性分析。额叶N2、后部P1和晚期正成分是仅与行为错误呈现显著相关性的ERP。行为表现由年龄以及从ERP的主成分分析（PCA）中提取的第一个成分的得分预测。年龄（17岁以下）解释了预测行为错误的双变量模型所解释方差的85.04%，PCA成分解释了14.96%（1/年龄+第一个PCA成分的得分）。从17岁起，主PCA成分不再是预测错误表现的独立成分。结果表明，ERP成分的个体成熟在控制WM中的行为错误方面似乎尤为重要，这通过DMTS来衡量。
