AI Article Synopsis
- Working memory (WM) relies on communication between the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex (EC), but the specific mechanisms of this interaction during WM maintenance in humans are not well understood.
- Researchers recorded brain activity using intracranial electroencephalography from patients while they performed WM tasks, discovering that successful WM maintenance involved increased synchronization of theta/alpha brain waves between the hippocampus and EC.
- The study revealed that this communication is unidirectional, with the hippocampus influencing the EC, and that this influence grows stronger as WM load increases, indicating a load-dependent relationship in the brain circuitry involved in WM.
Article Abstract
Working memory (WM) maintenance relies on multiple brain regions and inter-regional communications. The hippocampus and entorhinal cortex (EC) are thought to support this operation. Besides, EC is the main gateway for information between the hippocampus and neocortex. However, the circuit-level mechanism of this interaction during WM maintenance remains unclear in humans. To address these questions, we recorded the intracranial electroencephalography from the hippocampus and EC while patients ( = 13, six females) performed WM tasks. We found that WM maintenance was accompanied by enhanced theta/alpha band (2-12 Hz) phase synchronization between the hippocampus to the EC. The Granger causality and phase slope index analyses consistently showed that WM maintenance was associated with theta/alpha band-coordinated unidirectional influence from the hippocampus to the EC. Besides, this unidirectional inter-regional communication increased with WM load and predicted WM load during memory maintenance. These findings demonstrate that WM maintenance in humans engages the hippocampal-entorhinal circuit, with the hippocampus influencing the EC in a load-dependent manner.
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Source |
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| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10860618 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0398-23.2023 | DOI Listing |
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