International research center for Cognitive Applied Neuroscience (IrcCAN), Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 20123 Milan, Italy.
Research Unit in Affective and Social Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 20123 Milan, Italy.
Sensors (Basel). 2024 Sep 4;24(17):5754. doi: 10.3390/s24175754.
Working memory (WM) is crucial for adequate performance execution in effective decision-making, enabling individuals to identify patterns and link information by focusing on current and past situations. This work explored behavioral and electrophysiological (EEG) WM correlates through a novel decision-making task, based on real-life situations, assessing WM workload related to contextual variables. A total of 24 participants performed three task phases (encoding, retrieval, and metacognition) while their EEG activity (delta, theta, alpha, and beta frequency bands) was continuously recorded. From the three phases, three main behavioral indices were computed: Efficiency in complex Decision-making, Tolerance of Decisional Complexity, and Metacognition of Difficulties. Results showed the central role of alpha and beta bands during encoding and retrieval: decreased alpha/beta activity in temporoparietal areas during encoding might indicate activation of regions related to verbal WM performance and a load-related effect, while decreased alpha activity in the same areas and increased beta activity over posterior areas during retrieval might indicate, respectively, active information processing and focused attention. Evidence from correlational analysis between the three indices and EEG bands are also discussed. Integration of behavioral and metacognitive data gathered through this novel task and their interrelation with EEG correlates during task performance proves useful to assess WM workload during complex managerial decision-making.
工作记忆（WM）对于有效的决策制定中的充分表现至关重要，使个体能够通过关注当前和过去的情况来识别模式和链接信息。这项工作通过一项新的决策任务探索了行为和电生理（EEG）WM 相关性，该任务基于现实生活情况，评估与上下文变量相关的 WM 工作负荷。共有 24 名参与者在执行三个任务阶段（编码、检索和元认知）的同时连续记录他们的 EEG 活动（delta、theta、alpha 和 beta 频带）。从这三个阶段中，计算了三个主要的行为指标：复杂决策的效率、决策复杂性的容忍度和困难的元认知。结果表明，alpha 和 beta 波段在编码和检索过程中起着核心作用：在编码过程中，颞顶区域的 alpha/beta 活动减少可能表明与言语 WM 表现和负载相关的区域的激活，而在同一区域的 alpha 活动减少和后部区域的 beta 活动增加可能分别表明主动信息处理和注意力集中。还讨论了三个指标与 EEG 波段之间的相关分析的证据。通过这项新任务收集的行为和元认知数据的整合及其与任务执行期间 EEG 相关性的相互关系，有助于评估复杂管理决策中的 WM 工作负荷。
