Wang Hui, He Weijiang, Wu Jingting, Zhang Junjun, Jin Zhenlan, Li Ling
Key Laboratory for NeuroInformation of Ministry of Education, High-Field Magnetic Resonance Brain Imaging Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Center for Information in Medicine, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China.
Key Laboratory for NeuroInformation of Ministry of Education, High-Field Magnetic Resonance Brain Imaging Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Center for Information in Medicine, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China.
Brain Cogn. 2019 Jun;132:1-12. doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2019.01.002. Epub 2019 Jan 30.
The n-back task is a classical paradigm for functional neuroimaging studies of working memory (WM). The frontal and parietal cortical regions are known to be activated during the task. We used activation likelihood estimation (ALE) to conduct a quantitative meta-analysis of 96 primary studies of n-back task variants based on four conditions: memory loads (1-back, 2-back), object (identity, location), age (younger, older) and gender (male, female). Six cortical regions were consistently activated across all the studies: bilateral middle frontal gyrus (BA 10); bilateral inferior parietal lobule (BA 40); bilateral precuneus (BA 7); left superior frontal gyrus (BA 6); left anterior insula (aI) (BA 13); bilateral thalamus. Further meta-analyses revealed that different regions were sensitive to different conditions: compared with 1-back, 2-back increased activation in left middle frontal gyrus, left inferior frontal gyrus and left aI; compared with object location, object identity increased activation in right aI; young, compared with older subjects showed increased activation in frontal, parietal lobule, and right aI; the comparison between male and female showed no differences. Thus, our findings, showed consistent activation of frontal and parietal cortical regions, while other regions such as the aI, showed different activation patterns depending on varying experimental classification conditions.
n-back任务是工作记忆（WM）功能神经影像学研究的经典范式。已知在该任务过程中额叶和顶叶皮质区域会被激活。我们使用激活可能性估计（ALE）对基于四种条件的96项n-back任务变体的初步研究进行了定量荟萃分析：记忆负荷（1-back、2-back）、对象（身份、位置）、年龄（年轻、年长）和性别（男性、女性）。在所有研究中均持续激活六个皮质区域：双侧额中回（BA 10）；双侧顶下小叶（BA 40）；双侧楔前叶（BA 7）；左侧额上回（BA 6）；左侧前岛叶（aI）（BA 1十三）；双侧丘脑。进一步的荟萃分析表明，不同区域对不同条件敏感：与1-back相比，2-back增加了左侧额中回、左侧额下回和左侧aI的激活；与对象位置相比，对象身份增加了右侧aI的激活；与年长受试者相比，年轻受试者在额叶、顶叶小叶和右侧aI的激活增加；男性和女性之间的比较没有差异。因此，我们的研究结果表明额叶和顶叶皮质区域持续激活，而其他区域如aI则根据不同的实验分类条件表现出不同的激活模式。
