There is now evidence for definite and early cognitive deficits in Parkinson's disease (PD), involving, in particular, executive functions and working memory. However, the distinction between visuo-spatial and non-spatial working memory deficits and the impact of dopamine on these deficits are still open to debate. The aim of this study was therefore to investigate cognitive and motor performan...

The present study addresses three questions regarding age differences in working memory: (1) whether performance on complex span tasks decreases as a function of age at a faster rate than performance on simple span tasks; (2) whether spatial working memory decreases at a faster rate than verbal working memory; and (3) whether the structure of working memory abilities is different for different ...

The ability to maintain the serial order of events is recognized as a major function of working memory. Although general models of working memory postulate a close link between working memory and attention, such a link has so far not been proposed specifically for serial-order working memory. The present study provided the first empirical demonstration of a direct link between serial order in v...

We report the case of B.A., an 11-year-old child with a nonverbal (visuospatial) learning disability (NLD). Detailed psychometric and neuropsychological assessment on visuospatial working memory (VSWM) revealed specific simultaneous-spatial working memory impairment. A treatment targeting simultaneous-spatial working memory was given to B.A. for seven sessions (over one month); this resulted in...

Postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD) occurs in nearly one-third of patients after non-cardiac surgery. Many animal behavior studies have investigated the effect of general anesthesia on cognitive function. However, there have been no studies examining the effects on working memory specifically, with a focus on the retention of working memory. We demonstrate here that isoflurane anesthesia...

Article history: Received 12 December 2011 Received in revised form 14 March 2012 Accepted 10 May 2012 Available online 6 June 2012 This study explored the controversy surrounding working memory: whether it is a unitary system providing general purpose resources or a more differentiated system with domainspecific sub-components. A total of 348 participants completed a set of 6workingmemory task...

The prefrontal cortex plays a critical role in working memory, the active maintenance of information for brief periods of time for guiding future motor and cognitive processes. Two competing models have emerged to account for the growing human and non-human primate literature examining the functional neuroanatomy of working memory. One theory holds that the lateral frontal cortex plays a domain...

BACKGROUND Chunking is a powerful encoding strategy that significantly improves working memory performance in normal young people. AIMS To investigate chunking in patients with mild Alzheimer's disease and in a control group of elderly people without cognitive impairment. METHOD People with mild Alzheimer's disease (n = 28) were recruited and divided according to Mini-Mental State Examinati...

The relative importance of visual-spatial and verbal working memory for mathematics performance and learning seems to vary with age, the novelty of the material, and the specific math domain that is investigated. In this study, the relations between verbal and visual-spatial working memory and performance in four math domains (i.e., addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) at differ...