2026-04-14T06:14:17Zhttps://recercat.cat/oai/request

oai:recercat.cat:2072/4867142025-10-27T13:48:22Zcom_2072_98col_2072_378192

Differences in prefrontal cortex activity based on difficulty in a working memory task using near-infrared spectroscopy Lucas, Ignacio Urieta, Patricia Balada, Ferran Blanco Calvo, Eduardo Aluja, Anton Prefrontal cortex Working memory Sternberg task Functional near-infrared spectroscopy Altres ajuts: I. Lucas holds a predoctoral grant from the University of Lleida. P. Urieta holds a predoctoral grant from the AGAUR: Autonomous Government of Catalonia. The Prefrontal cortex (PFC) has been highly related to executive functions such as 2 working memory (WM). This study assesses the activity of the PFC in performing the Sternberg WM task (ST) with three levels of difficulty (easy, medium and hard) using the near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) technique. Participants were 43 young and healthy right-handed women. Nine WM task blocks were pseudo randomly presented, three for each difficulty task. The results showed that the participant's performance was better in the easy trials than in the medium and hard trials. Performance in the medium trials was also better than in the hard ones. Bonferronicorrected paired post-hoc t-tests indicated higher oxygenation in medium and hard tasks than in the easy ones for times between 13 and 42 seconds in the left lateral PFC and in both, medial and lateral, right PFC. Significant differences in Oxygenated hemoglobin (HbO), Total hemoglobin (HbT) and oxygenation (Oxy) changes depending on the Sternberg WM task were found. Unlike previous studies with fNIRS and WM, the current study uses a highly controlled WM task that differentiates between encoding, retention and retrieval phases, comparing different levels of task load. 2020 Article https://ddd.uab.cat/record/318065 urn:10.1016/j.bbr.2020.112722 urn:oai:ddd.uab.cat:318065 urn:oai:egreta.uab.cat:publications/4c641b16-a707-4def-a3f6-b08a42f3e328 urn:pure_id:464067404 urn:scopus_id:85086004344 urn:articleid:18727549v392e112722 eng Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad PSI2015-63551-P Behavioural brain research ; Vol. 392 (17 August 2020) art. e112722 open access Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, i la comunicació pública de l'obra, sempre que no sigui amb finalitats comercials, i sempre que es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original. No es permet la creació d'obres derivades. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ application/pdf