The broad objective of the proposed research program is to assess the contribution of the frontal lobes to human memory. Behavioral analyses of neurological patients will be used to provide an understanding of neural systems underlying cognitive function. In the proposed studies, patients with frontal lobe lesions will be evaluated on a variety of memory and cognitive measures. Recently, the role of the frontal lobes in human memory and cognition has been studied rather extensively. Advances in the field have been attained by progress in human functional neuroimaging techniques, in cognitive analyses of patients with frontal lobe lesions, and in neurobehavioral analyses of animal models. These advances have led to the hypothesis that the frontal lobes contribute to """"""""working memory""""""""-that is, the on-line monitoring and controlling of information processing. The proposed research program will assess a theoretical framework that attempts to refine and extend the notion of working memory. It is suggested that the prefrontal cortex acts as a dynamic filtering mechanism that gates and ultimately controls stimulus encoding and memory activation. Damage to this mechanism results in a failure to filter inappropriate stimulus features, memories, and response decisions. In the proposed studies, patients with lesions of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex will be evaluated on a variety of tests that tap aspects of attention and memory. These patients will be compared to neurologically intact control subjects and to other neurological patients (e.g., patients with orbital prefrontal lesions or temporal-parietal lesions). Central research questions include the following: What is the relationship between memory and other cognitive disorders observed in patients with frontal lobe lesions? At what stage or stages of memory processing do the frontal lobes appear to make significant contributions-stimulus encoding, access to semantic memory, memory storage, memory retrieval? As a result of an impairment in gating or selection, are patients with frontal lobe lesions more susceptible to interference from irrelevant or extraneous information?
| Touryan, Sharon R; Marian, Diane E; Shimamura, Arthur P (2007) Effect of negative emotional pictures on associative memory for peripheral information. Memory 15:154-66 |
| Ravizza, Susan M; Ciranni, Michael A (2002) Contributions of the prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia to set shifting. J Cogn Neurosci 14:472-83 |
| Baldo, Juliana V; Delis, Dean; Kramer, Joel et al. (2002) Memory performance on the California Verbal Learning Test-II: findings from patients with focal frontal lesions. J Int Neuropsychol Soc 8:539-46 |
| Sylvester, Ching-Yune C; Shimamura, Arthur P (2002) Evidence for intact semantic representations in patients with frontal lobe lesions. Neuropsychology 16:197-207 |
| Baldo, J V; Shimamura, A P; Delis, D C et al. (2001) Verbal and design fluency in patients with frontal lobe lesions. J Int Neuropsychol Soc 7:586-96 |
| Prinzmetal, W; Shimamura, A P; Mikolinski, M (2001) The Ponzo illusion and the perception of orientation. Percept Psychophys 63:99-114 |
| Doerksen, S; Shimamura, A P (2001) Source memory enhancement for emotional words. Emotion 1:5-11 |
| Shimamura, A P (2000) Toward a cognitive neuroscience of metacognition. Conscious Cogn 9:313-23; discussion 324-6 |
| Slotnick, S D; Klein, S A; Dodson, C S et al. (2000) An analysis of signal detection and threshold models of source memory. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 26:1499-517 |
| Dodson, C S; Shimamura, A P (2000) Differential effects of cue dependency on item and source memory. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 26:1023-44 |
Showing the most recent 10 out of 17 publications
