Working Memory and the Hippocampus

摘要

A number of studies suggest an important role for the hippocampusnin tasks involving visuospatial or relational workingmemory.nWe test the generality of this proposal across tasks using anbattery designed to investigate the various components of workingnmemory, studying the working memory performance ofnJon, who shows a bilateral reduction in hippocampal volume ofnapproximately 50%, comparing him to a group of 48 college students.nWe measure performance on four complex working memorynspan measures based on combining visuospatial and verbalnstorage with visuospatial or verbal concurrent processing as wellnas measuring Jonʼs ability to carry out the component storagenand processing aspects of these tasks. Jon performed at a consistentlynhigh level across our range of tasks. Possible reasonsnfor the apparent disparity between our own findings and earliernstudies showing a hippocampal deficit are discussed in terms ofnboth the potential differences in the demands placed on relationalnmemory and of the proposed distinction between egocentricnand allocentric visuospatial processing.