I don't know if there is evidence for Baddeley's working memory notions
from brain imaging studies. What has been well supported though is
the intimate relationship between 'working memory' and the prefrontal
cortex. One of the standard signatures of working memory tasks using brain
imaging techniques is inferior prefrontal cortex activation. In addition,
the frontal lobes have long been associated with central executive
operations (working memory, card sorting, source discrimination, planning,
maintaining temporal order, etc.) based on patient, developmental (children
and older adults), and non-human primate studies.
It is unclear to me how the last paragraph from the previous post fits into
this huge body of literature.
A couple older sources are cited below, I'm sure there are more recent
ones.
Patrick
Grady, C. L., Maisog, J. M. et al. (1994). Age-related changes in
cortical blood flow activation during visual processing of faces and
locations. Journal of Neuroscience, 14, 1450-1462.
Smith, M. L., Kates, M. H., & Vriezen, E. R. (1992) The development
of frontal-lobe functions. In F. Boller & J. Grafman (Eds.), Handbook of
neuropsychology (Vol.7, pp 309-330). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
At 10:51 PM 4/5/99 -0400, Ron Blue wrote:
>
>>Baddeley has taken STM and created a working memory system comprised of a
>>Central Executive and various "slave systems" - the visual-spacial sketch
>>pad and the rehearsal loop system (itself composed of two systems: the
>>articulatory loop and the phonological store) being the two that have been
>>explored experimentally. Thus, the "traditional" idea of the STM structure
>>is now instantiated as a complex of separate processing structures.
>>>>>
>Braddeley's model of working memory is historically important. While it
is true
>the brain may act as if it has a Central Executive and slave systems for
various
>functions, I would suggest that functional magnetic resonance imaging
would not
>support this position.
>
>fMRI shows that as learning proceeds that neuro firing patterns become
>correlated with lower rates of firing over widely dispersed areas in the
brain.
>This illustrates the formation of wavelet filters for a behavior. This is
>similar to a slave system for a particular behavior. The formation of a
global
>Central Executive structure can in principle be created from the above
>procedure. The actual location would be at different positions for different
>people.
>
>Ron Blue
>
>
>
>
>
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