Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 103, Issue 51, Pages 19530-19534Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0604509103
Keywords
cognitive control; inferior frontal gyrus; transcranial magnetic stimulation
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Controlling the effects of proactive interference (PI), the deleterious effect of prior mental activity on current memory representations, is believed to be a key function of the prefrontal cortex. This view is supported by neuroimaging evidence for a correlation between the longer reaction times caused by high PI conditions of a working memory task and increased activity in left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) of the prefrontal cortex. An alternative that has never been ruled out, however, is that this left IFG effect may merely reflect sensitivity to such nonspecific factors as difficulty and/or time on task. To resolve this confound, we applied the interference methodology of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to the left IFG and two control regions while subjects performed delayed letter recognition. rTMS was guided with high-resolution magnetic resonance images and was time-locked to the onset of the memory probe. The effect of rTMS, a disruption of accuracy restricted to high-PI probes, was specific to the left IFG. These results demonstrate that unpredictable, phasic disruption of the left IFG selectively disrupts control of responses to high-conflict verbal working memory probes, and they conclusively reject nonspecific alternative accounts.
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