Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, 230022, China.
Research Center of Clinical Medical Imaging, Anhui Province, Hefei, 230032, China.
BMC Biol. 2024 Oct 21;22(1):238. doi: 10.1186/s12915-024-02039-0.
Working memory (WM), a core component of executive functions, relies on a dedicated brain system that maintains and stores information in the short term. While extensive neuroimaging research has identified a distributed set of neural substrates relevant to WM, their underlying molecular mechanisms remain enigmatic. This study investigated the neural correlates of WM as well as their underlying molecular mechanisms.
Our voxel-wise analyses of resting-state functional MRI data from 502 healthy young adults showed that better WM performance (higher accuracy and shorter reaction time of the 3-back task) was associated with lower functional connectivity density (FCD) in the left inferior temporal gyrus and higher FCD in the left anterior cingulate cortex. A combination of transcriptome-neuroimaging spatial correlation and the ensemble-based gene category enrichment analysis revealed that the identified neural correlates of WM were associated with expression of diverse gene categories involving important cortical components and their biological processes as well as sodium channels. Cross-region spatial correlation analyses demonstrated significant associations between the neural correlates of WM and a range of neurotransmitters including dopamine, glutamate, serotonin, and acetylcholine.
These findings may help to shed light on the molecular mechanisms underlying the neural correlates of WM.
工作记忆（WM）是执行功能的核心组成部分，它依赖于一个专门的大脑系统，用于在短期内维持和存储信息。虽然广泛的神经影像学研究已经确定了与 WM 相关的一组分布式神经基质，但它们的潜在分子机制仍然是个谜。本研究旨在探讨 WM 的神经相关性及其潜在的分子机制。
我们对 502 名健康年轻成年人的静息状态功能磁共振成像数据进行了体素分析，结果表明，WM 表现更好（3 -back 任务的准确率更高，反应时间更短）与左颞下回的功能连接密度（FCD）降低和左前扣带皮层的 FCD 升高有关。转录组-神经影像学空间相关性和基于集合的基因类别富集分析的结合表明，WM 的神经相关性与涉及重要皮质成分及其生物过程以及钠离子通道的多种基因类别的表达有关。跨区域空间相关性分析表明，WM 的神经相关性与包括多巴胺、谷氨酸、血清素和乙酰胆碱在内的一系列神经递质之间存在显著关联。
这些发现可能有助于阐明 WM 的神经相关性的潜在分子机制。
