Nęcka Edward, Gruszka Aleksandra, Hampshire Adam, Sarzyńska-Wawer Justyna, Anicai Andreea-Elena, Orzechowski Jarosław, Nowak Michał, Wójcik Natalia, Sandrone Stefano, Soreq Eyal
Faculty of Philosophy, Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, 31-007 Krakow, Poland.
The C3NL Lab, Department of Brain Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, London SW7 2BU, UK.
Brain Sci. 2021 Jan 25;11(2):155. doi: 10.3390/brainsci11020155.
This study aimed to investigate if two weeks of working memory (WM) training on a progressive N-back task can generate changes in the activity of the underlying WM neural network. Forty-six healthy volunteers (23 training and 23 controls) were asked to perform the N-back task during three fMRI scanning sessions: (1) before training, (2) after the half of training sessions, and (3) at the end. Between the scanning sessions, the experimental group underwent a 10-session training of working memory with the use of an adaptive version of the N-back task, while the control group did not train anything. The N-back task in the scanning sessions was relatively easy ( = 2) in order to ensure high accuracy and a lack of between-group differences at the behavioral level. Such training-induced differences in neural efficiency were expected. Behavioral analyses revealed improved performance of both groups on the N-back task. However, these improvements resulted from the test-retest effect, not the training outside scanner. Performance on the non-trained stop-signal task did not demonstrate any transfer effect. Imaging analysis showed changes in activation in several significant clusters, with overlapping regions of interest in the frontal and parietal lobes. However, patterns of between-session changes of activation did not show any effect of training. The only finding that can be linked with training consists in strengthening the correlation between task performance accuracy and activation of the parietal regions of the neural network subserving working memory (left superior parietal lobule and right supramarginal gyrus posterior). These results suggest that the effects of WM training consist in learning that, in order to ensure high accuracy in the criterion task, activation of the parietal regions implicated in working memory updating must rise.
本研究旨在调查在渐进式N-back任务上进行两周的工作记忆（WM）训练是否会引起潜在WM神经网络活动的变化。46名健康志愿者（23名训练组和23名对照组）被要求在三次功能磁共振成像（fMRI）扫描过程中执行N-back任务：（1）训练前，（2）训练课程进行一半后，以及（3）训练结束时。在扫描过程之间，实验组使用自适应版的N-back任务进行了10次工作记忆训练，而对照组未进行任何训练。扫描过程中的N-back任务相对简单（N=2），以确保行为水平上的高准确性和组间无差异。预期会出现这种训练引起的神经效率差异。行为分析显示两组在N-back任务上的表现均有所改善。然而，这些改善是由重测效应导致的，而非扫描仪外的训练。在未训练的停止信号任务上的表现未显示出任何迁移效应。成像分析显示在几个显著簇中的激活发生了变化，额叶和顶叶存在重叠的感兴趣区域。然而，激活的扫描过程间变化模式未显示出训练的任何效果。唯一可与训练相关联的发现是，任务表现准确性与服务于工作记忆的神经网络顶叶区域（左侧顶上小叶和右侧缘上回后部）激活之间的相关性增强。这些结果表明，WM训练的效果在于学习，即为了确保标准任务中的高准确性，参与工作记忆更新的顶叶区域的激活必须增强。
