The Role of Lateral Inferior Prefrontal Cortex during Information Retrieval

摘要

To investigate the role of lateral inferior prefrontal cortex (LIPFC) during information retrieval, we used two tasks based on the phenomenon of basic-level advantage and its reversal to examine the activities in this region across tasks. As expected, this region was involved in both tasks during the processing of information retrieval. ROI analysis showed there was a stronger activation in word-picture matching (WP) task in LIPFC than that in picture-word matching (PW) task. Moreover, although as for the behavioral performance, we observed a typical basic-level advantage effect in PW task and the reversal advantage effect to more general level in WP task, the activities in left LIPFC were similar across the tasks, which was not consistent with our expectation. The intensity was weakest in the condition of intermediate level, and the differences between intermediate and other two levels reached significant level in WP task. These results suggested the region of LIPFC controlled retrieval of knowledge information, and the activation in LIPFC depended more on internal memory system, not the external task demand.