Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T11:16:08.232Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Activation of the Occipital Cortex and Deactivation of the Default Mode Network During Working Memory in the Early Blind

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 February 2011

Hae-Jeong Park ,
Ji-Won Chun ,
Bumhee Park ,
Haeil Park ,
Joong Il Kim ,
Jong Doo Lee  and
Jae-Jin Kim
Hae-Jeong Park
Affiliation:
Department of Radiology, Division of Nuclear Medicine and Research Institute of Radiological Science, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea Brain Korea 21 Project for Medical Science, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea Department of Psychiatry and Institute of Behavioral Science in Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
Ji-Won Chun
Affiliation:
Department of Radiology, Division of Nuclear Medicine and Research Institute of Radiological Science, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea Brain Korea 21 Project for Medical Science, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea Department of Psychiatry and Institute of Behavioral Science in Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
Bumhee Park
Affiliation:
Department of Radiology, Division of Nuclear Medicine and Research Institute of Radiological Science, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea Brain Korea 21 Project for Medical Science, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
Haeil Park
Affiliation:
Department of Radiology, Division of Nuclear Medicine and Research Institute of Radiological Science, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea Department of English Language and Literature, Myongji University, Seoul, Korea
Joong Il Kim
Affiliation:
Department of Radiology, Division of Nuclear Medicine and Research Institute of Radiological Science, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea Brain Korea 21 Project for Medical Science, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
Jong Doo Lee
Affiliation:
Department of Radiology, Division of Nuclear Medicine and Research Institute of Radiological Science, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea Brain Korea 21 Project for Medical Science, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
Jae-Jin Kim*
Affiliation:
Department of Radiology, Division of Nuclear Medicine and Research Institute of Radiological Science, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea Brain Korea 21 Project for Medical Science, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea Department of Psychiatry and Institute of Behavioral Science in Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
*
Correspondence and reprint requests to: Jae-Jin Kim, M.D., Ph.D., Department of Psychiatry, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Gangnam Severance Hospital, 712 Eonjuro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Korea 135-720. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Although blind people heavily depend on working memory to manage daily life without visual information, it is not clear yet whether their working memory processing involves functional reorganization of the memory-related cortical network. To explore functional reorganization of the cortical network that supports various types of working memory processes in the early blind, we investigated activation differences between 2-back tasks and 0-back tasks using fMRI in 10 congenitally blind subjects and 10 sighted subjects. We used three types of stimulus sequences: words for a verbal task, pitches for a non-verbal task, and sound locations for a spatial task. When compared to the sighted, the blind showed additional activations in the occipital lobe for all types of stimulus sequences for working memory and more significant deactivation in the posterior cingulate cortex of the default mode network. The blind had increased effective connectivity from the default mode network to the left parieto-frontal network and from the occipital cortex to the right parieto-frontal network during the 2-back tasks than the 0-back tasks. These findings suggest not only cortical plasticity of the occipital cortex but also reorganization of the cortical network for the executive control of working memory. (JINS, 2011, 17, 407–422)

Keywords

Early blindWorking memoryOccipital cortexDefault modeGranger causalityEffective connectivity
Type
Research Articles
Information
Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , May 2011 , pp. 407 - 422
Copyright
Copyright © The International Neuropsychological Society 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Amedi, A., Floel, A., Knecht, S., Zohary, E., Cohen, L.G. (2004). Transcranial magnetic stimulation of the occipital pole interferes with verbal processing in blind subjects. Nature Neuroscience, 7, 1266–1270.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Amedi, A., Raz, N., Pianka, P., Malach, R., Zohary, E. (2003). Early ‘visual’ cortex activation correlates with superior verbal memory performance in the blind. Nature Neuroscience, 6, 758–766.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baddeley, A. (1998). The central executive: A concept and some misconceptions. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 4, 523–526.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baddeley, A. (2003). Working memory: Looking back and looking forward. Nature Review Neuroscience, 4x, 829–839.Google Scholar
Baddeley, A.D., Hitch, G.J.L. (1974). Working Memory. In Bower, G.A. (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation: Advances in research and theory (Vol. 8, pp. 47–89). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Bell, A.J., Sejnowski, T.J. (1995). An information-maximization approach to blind separation and blind deconvolution. Neural Computation, 7, 1129–1159.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Braver, T.S., Cohen, J.D., Nystrom, L.E., Jonides, J., Smith, E.E., Noll, D.C. (1997). A parametric study of prefrontal cortex involvement in human working memory. Neuroimage, 5, 49–62.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bressler, S.L., Seth, A.K. (2010). Wiener-Granger Causality: A well established methodology. Neuroimage [Epub ahead of print].Google ScholarPubMed
Burton, H. (2003). Visual cortex activity in early and late blind people. Journal of Neuroscience, 23, 4005–4011.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Burton, H., Diamond, J.B., McDermott, K.B. (2003). Dissociating cortical regions activated by semantic and phonological tasks: A FMRI study in blind and sighted people. Journal of Neurophysiology, 90, 1965–1982.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cabeza, R., Nyberg, L. (2000). Imaging cognition II: An empirical review of 275 PET and fMRI studies. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12, 1–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calhoun, V.D., Adali, T., Pearlson, G.D., Pekar, J.J. (2001). A method for making group inferences from functional MRI data using independent component analysis. Human Brain Mapping, 14, 140–151.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cohen, J.D., Perlstein, W.M., Braver, T.S., Nystrom, L.E., Noll, D.C., Jonides, J., Smith, E.E. (1997). Temporal dynamics of brain activation during a working memory task. Nature, 386, 604–608.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Damoiseaux, J.S., Beckmann, C.F., Arigita, E.J., Barkhof, F., Scheltens, P., Stam, C.J., Rombouts, S.A. (2008). Reduced resting-state brain activity in the “default network” in normal aging. Cerebral Cortex, 18, 1856–1864.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Damoiseaux, J.S., Rombouts, S.A., Barkhof, F., Scheltens, P., Stam, C.J., Smith, S.M., Beckmann, C.F. (2006). Consistent resting-state networks across healthy subjects. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 103, 13848–13853.Google ScholarPubMed
D'Argembeau, A., Collette, F., Van der Linden, M., Laureys, S., Del Fiore, G., Degueldre, C., Salmon, E. (2005). Self-referential reflective activity and its relationship with rest: A PET study. Neuroimage, 25, 616–624.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Della Sala, S., Gray, C., Baddeley, A.D., Allamano, N., Wilson, L. (1999). Pattern span: A tool for unwelding visuo-spatial memory. Neuropsychologia, 37, 1189–1199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Desmond, J.E., Chen, S.H., Shieh, P.B. (2005). Cerebellar transcranial magnetic stimulation impairs verbal working memory. Annals of Neurology, 58, 553–560.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Esposito, F., Bertolino, A., Scarabino, T., Latorre, V., Blasi, G., Popolizio, T., Di Salle, F. (2006). Independent component model of the default-mode brain function: Assessing the impact of active thinking. Brain Research Bulletin, 70, 263–269.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fransson, P. (2006). How default is the default mode of brain function? Further evidence from intrinsic BOLD signal fluctuations. Neuropsychologia, 44, 2836–2845.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fransson, P., Marrelec, G. (2008). The precuneus/posterior cingulate cortex plays a pivotal role in the default mode network: Evidence from a partial correlation network analysis. Neuroimage, 42, 1178–1184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fujii, T., Tanabe, H.C., Kochiyama, T., Sadato, N. (2009). An investigation of cross-modal plasticity of effective connectivity in the blind by dynamic causal modeling of functional MRI data. Neuroscience Research, 65, 175–186.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Granger, C. (1969). Investigating causal relations by econometric models and cross-spectral methods. Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society, 37, 424–438.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gusnard, D.A., Akbudak, E., Shulman, G.L., Raichle, M.E. (2001). Medial prefrontal cortex and self-referential mental activity: Relation to a default mode of brain function. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 98, 4259–4264.Google ScholarPubMed
Hampson, M., Driesen, N.R., Skudlarski, P., Gore, J.C., Constable, R.T. (2006). Brain connectivity related to working memory performance. Journal of Neuroscience, 26, 13338–13343.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Klinge, C., Eippert, F., Roder, B., Buchel, C. (2010). Corticocortical connections mediate primary visual cortex responses to auditory stimulation in the blind. Journal of Neuroscience, 30, 12798–12805.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kujala, T., Alho, K., Kekoni, J., Hamalainen, H., Reinikainen, K., Salonen, O., Näätänen, R. (1995). Auditory and somatosensory event-related brain potentials in early blind humans. Experimental Brain Research, 104, 519–526.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lambert, S., Sampaio, E., Mauss, Y., Scheiber, C. (2004). Blindness and brain plasticity: Contribution of mental imagery? An fMRI study. Brain Research, Cognitive Brain Research, 20, 1–11.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leclerc, C., Segalowitz, S.J., Desjardins, J., Lassonde, M., Lepore, F. (2005). EEG coherence in early-blind humans during sound localization. Neuroscience Letters, 376, 154–159.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Liotti, M., Ryder, K., Woldorff, M.G. (1998). Auditory attention in the congenitally blind: Where, when and what gets reorganized? Neuroreport, 9, 1007–1012.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Liu, Y., Yu, C., Liang, M., Li, J., Tian, L., Zhou, Y., Jiang, T. (2007). Whole brain functional connectivity in the early blind. Brain, 130, 2085–2096.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Martinkauppi, S., Rama, P., Aronen, H.J., Korvenoja, A., Carlson, S. (2000). Working memory of auditory localization. Cerebral Cortex, 10, 889–898.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mason, M.F., Norton, M.I., Van Horn, J.D., Wegner, D.M., Grafton, S.T., Macrae, C.N. (2007). Wandering minds: The default network and stimulus-independent thought. Science, 315, 393–395.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McEvoy, L.K., Smith, M.E., Gevins, A. (1998). Dynamic cortical networks of verbal and spatial working memory: Effects of memory load and task practice. Cerebral Cortex, 8, 563–574.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McGuire, P.K., Paulesu, E., Frackowiak, R.S., Frith, C.D. (1996). Brain activity during stimulus independent thought. Neuroreport, 7, 2095–2099.Google ScholarPubMed
McKiernan, K.A., Kaufman, J.N., Kucera-Thompson, J., Binder, J.R. (2003). A parametric manipulation of factors affecting task-induced deactivation in functional neuroimaging. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 15, 394–408.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nixon, P., Lazarova, J., Hodinott-Hill, I., Gough, P., Passingham, R. (2004). The inferior frontal gyrus and phonological processing: An investigation using rTMS. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16, 289–300.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Park, H.J., Jeong, S.O., Kim, E.Y., Kim, J.I., Park, H., Oh, M.K., Lee, J.D. (2007). Reorganization of neural circuits in the blind on diffusion direction analysis. Neuroreport, 18, 1757–1760.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Park, H.J., Lee, J.D., Kim, E.Y., Park, B., Oh, M.K., Lee, S., Kim, J.J. (2009). Morphological alterations in the congenital blind based on the analysis of cortical thickness and surface area. Neuroimage, 47, 98–106.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Raichle, M.E., MacLeod, A.M., Snyder, A.Z., Powers, W.J., Gusnard, D.A., Shulman, G.L. (2001). A default mode of brain function. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 98, 676–682.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Raz, N., Amedi, A., Zohary, E. (2005). V1 activation in congenitally blind humans is associated with episodic retrieval. Cerebral Cortex, 15, 1459–1468.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Raz, N., Striem, E., Pundak, G., Orlov, T., Zohary, E. (2007). Superior serial memory in the blind: A case of cognitive compensatory adjustment. Current Biology, 17, 1129–1133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roder, B., Rosler, F. (2003). Memory for environmental sounds in sighted, congenitally blind and late blind adults: Evidence for cross-modal compensation. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 50, 27–39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roder, B., Rosler, F., Hennighausen, E., Nacker, F. (1996). Event-related potentials during auditory and somatosensory discrimination in sighted and blind human subjects. Brain Research, Cognitive Brain Research, 4, 77–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roder, B., Rosler, F., Neville, H.J. (2001). Auditory memory in congenitally blind adults: A behavioral-electrophysiological investigation. Brain Research, Cognitive Brain Research, 11, 289–303.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roder, B., Stock, O., Bien, S., Neville, H., Rosler, F. (2002). Speech processing activates visual cortex in congenitally blind humans. European Journal of Neuroscience, 16, 930–936.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roebroeck, A., Formisano, E., Goebel, R. (2005). Mapping directed influence over the brain using Granger causality and fMRI. Neuroimage, 25, 230–242.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sadato, N., Pascual-Leone, A., Grafman, J., Deiber, M.P., Ibanez, V., Hallett, M. (1998). Neural networks for Braille reading by the blind. Brain, 121, 1213–1229.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sadato, N., Pascual-Leone, A., Grafman, J., Ibanez, V., Deiber, M.P., Dold, G., Hallett, M. (1996). Activation of the primary visual cortex by Braille reading in blind subjects. Nature, 380, 526–528.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Salvador, R., Martinez, A., Pomarol-Clotet, E., Gomar, J., Vila, F., Sarro, S., Bullmore, E. (2008). A simple view of the brain through a frequency-specific functional connectivity measure. Neuroimage, 39, 279–289.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sambataro, F., Murty, V.P., Callicott, J.H., Tan, H.Y., Das, S., Weinberger, D.R., Mattay, V.S. (2010). Age-related alterations in default mode network: Impact on working memory performance. Neurobiol Aging, 31(5), 839–852.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schacter, D.L., Addis, D.R. (2007). The cognitive neuroscience of constructive memory: Remembering the past and imagining the future. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 362, 773–786.Google ScholarPubMed
Scheeringa, R., Petersson, K.M., Oostenveld, R., Norris, D.G., Hagoort, P., Bastiaansen, M.C. (2009). Trial-by-trial coupling between EEG and BOLD identifies networks related to alpha and theta EEG power increases during working memory maintenance. Neuroimage, 44, 1224–1238.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shu, N., Liu, Y., Li, J., Li, Y., Yu, C., Jiang, T. (2009). Altered anatomical network in early blindness revealed by diffusion tensor tractography. PLoS One, 4, e7228.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Singh, K.D., Fawcett, I.P. (2008). Transient and linearly graded deactivation of the human default-mode network by a visual detection task. Neuroimage, 41, 100–112.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smith, E.E., Jonides, J. (1997). Working memory: A view from neuroimaging. Cognitive Psychology, 33, 5–42.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smith, E.E., Jonides, J., Koeppe, R.A. (1996). Dissociating verbal and spatial working memory using PET. Cerebral Cortex, 6, 11–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stevens, A.A., Snodgrass, M., Schwartz, D., Weaver, K. (2007). Preparatory activity in occipital cortex in early blind humans predicts auditory perceptual performance. Journal of Neuroscience, 27, 10734–10741.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weeks, R., Horwitz, B., Aziz-Sultan, A., Tian, B., Wessinger, C.M., Cohen, L.G., Rauschecker, J.P. (2000). A positron emission tomographic study of auditory localization in the congenitally blind. Journal of Neuroscience, 20, 2664–2672.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wicker, B., Ruby, P., Royet, J.P., Fonlupt, P. (2003). A relation between rest and the self in the brain? Brain Research, Brain Research Reviews, 43, 224–230.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wittenberg, G.F., Werhahn, K.J., Wassermann, E.M., Herscovitch, P., Cohen, L.G. (2004). Functional connectivity between somatosensory and visual cortex in early blind humans. European Journal of Neuroscience, 20, 1923–1927.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yu, C., Liu, Y., Li, J., Zhou, Y., Wang, K., Tian, L., Li, K. (2008). Altered functional connectivity of primary visual cortex in early blindness. Human Brain Mapping, 29, 533–543.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed