• Animal cells and systems
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.65-69
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• 1998

The hippocampus and prefrontal cortex are regarded as the highest-order association cortices. The hippocampus has been proposed to store "cognitive maps" of external environments, and the prefrontal cortex is known to be involved in the planning of behavior, among other functions. Considering the prominent functional roles played by these structures, it is not surprising to find direct monosynaptic projections from the hippocampus to the prefrontal cortex. Rhythmic stimulation of this projection patterned after the hippocampal EEG theta rhythm induced stable long-term potentiation of field potentials in the prefrontal cortex. Comparison of behavioral correlates of hippocampal and prefrontal cortical neurons during an a-arm radial maze, working memory task shows a striking contrast. Hippocampal neurons exhibit clear place-specific firing patterns, whereas prefrontal cortical neurons do not show spatial selectivity, but are correlated to different stages of the behavioral task. These data lead to the hypothesis that the role of hippocampal projection to the prefrontal cortex is not to impose spatial representations upon prefrontal activity, but to provide a mechanism for learning the spatial context in which particular behaviors are appropriate.propriate.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.238-249
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• 1998

Purpose: To localize and compare the neural basis of verbal and visual human working memory, we performed functional activation study using $H_2^{15}O$ PET. Materials and Methods: Repeated $H_2^{15}O$ PET scans with one control and three different activation tasks were performed on six right-handed normal volunteers. Each activation task was composed of 13 match-ing trials. On each trial, four targets, a fixation dot and a probe were presented sequentially and subject's task was to press a response button to indicate whether or not the probe was one of the previous targets. Short meaningful Korean words, simple drawings and monochromic pictures of human faces were used as matching objects for verbal or visual memory. All the images were spatially normalized and the differences between control and activation states were statistically analyzed using SPM96. Results: Statistical analysis of verbal memory activation with short words showed activation in the left Broca's area, promoter cortex, cerebellum and right cingulate gyrus. In verbal memory with simple drawings, activation was shown in the larger regions including where activated with short words and left superior temporal cortex, basal ganglia, thalamus, prefrontal cortex, anterior portion of right superior temporal gyrus and right infero-lateral frontal cortex. On the other hand, the visual memory task activated predominantly right-sided structures, especially inferior frontal cortex, supplementary motor cortex and superior parietal cortex. Conclusion: The results are consistent with the hypothesis of the laterality and dissociation of the verbal and visual working memory from the invasive electrophysiological studies and emphasize the pivotal role of frontal cortex and cingulate gyrus in working memory system.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.14 no.12
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• pp.854-862
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• 2014

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) students' intellctual defects, learning problems, and poor academic achievements seem to be due to significantly lower intelligence compared to the normal students, but rather the characteristic of inability to pay attention at a given time can be seen as the more attributing reason. In this study, a comparison between the ADHD students and the normal students will be performed using a fMRI analysis in order to differentiate the brain function between the two groups during a working memory task performance and to assess the difference in the activated regions of the brain. Clinical survey examinations and fMRI measurements were performed for a group of 26 elementary students from the Incheon area. The stimulus of fMRI was a working memory. Cartography statistically analyzed parameters and the Statistical Package of Social Sciences using single-sample t-test, two-sample t-test, were analyzed by multiple regression analysis, the statistical significance level was p<0.05 in, respectively. The disproportionate developments could be seen in the ADHD students group such as the frontal cortex, parietal cortex, thalamus, and caudate nucleus, among others. In addition, as some students felt the increase in the difficulty of working memory task performance, the orbitofrontal cortex and the hippocampus were activated, which seems to be the result of an effort for looking for an answer. More types of ADHD students needs to be secured as research subjects, and more stimulations for fMRI experiments should be considered as it would be useful in the overall evaluation of brain function.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.58 no.1
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• pp.210-215
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• 2009

In this study event-related optical signals were extracted from the prefrontal cortexes using functional near infrared spectroscopy while subjects were carrying out 2-back working memory tasks. Four events such as start, yes, no, and error were considered based on the onsets of the stimulus, positive true responses, positive false responses, and negative responses in the 2-back working memory task, respectively. The optical signals recorded were analyzed by peri-event histograms and power spectrum distributions. The results showed specific characteristics of the event-related optical neuronal signals and an opened possibility of an application to control a non-invasive brain-computer interface system or an object of a virtual reality.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.27-35
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• 2003

The present study, focusing on the stress-shift constructions, examines the tendency of young children to give wrong wide scope interpretation in language acquisition and questions the validity of the guess pattern hypothesis argued by Grodzinsky & Reinhart (1993). According to the hypothesis, children know that they have to construct a reference-set, keep two representations in working memory, and check whether the interpretation needed in the given context justifies selection of competing reference sets, but their working memory is not big enough to hold the materials needed to complete the execution of this task. Hence they give up and resort to a guess. 1 carried out an experiment of 16 Korean children aged 3;9 to 6;2 to find out whether children have more difficulty in the interpretation of stress-shift constructions than of constructions with a nuclear stress, and therefore perform the interpretation of the former by guessing. Assuming that the tendency is caused by a deficiency in contextual computation rather than reference set computation, I try to explain it in terms of pragmatic considerations.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.25-46
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• 2012

When performing a monotonous task, one often experiences an urge to quit. This urge may vary depending on how long one has performed the task (a temporal factor) and on which particular component of the task one is carrying out (an event-based factor). Using the Stroop task and a working memory task, we examined changes in the urge to quit as a function of basic temporal (repetition) and event-based (cognitive conflict) factors. Consistent with the law of least work and recent theorizing, for the memory task, urges to quit were greater following difficult trials; for the Stroop task, urges to quit were greater following incongruent than congruent trials, but only during early/novice phases of performance, when responding is inefficient. This is a demonstration of an avoidance response toward cognitive conflict. Regarding temporal sources of quitting, urges to quit were greater for late task stages than early stages. These basic findings may illuminate the nature of the more 'hot' motivational struggles involving the delay of gratification.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.199-209
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• 2017

Purpose: Caffeine is the most widely consumed psychostimulant. It is often adopted as a tool to modulate brain activations in fMRI studies. However, its pharmaceutical effect on task-induced deactivation has not been fully examined in fMRI. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the effect of caffeine on both activation and deactivation under sustained attention. Materials and Methods: Task fMRI was acquired from 26 caffeine naive healthy volunteers before and after taking caffeine pill (200 mg). Results: Statistical analysis showed an increase in cognition-load dependent task activation but a decrease in load dependent de-activation after caffeine ingestion. Increase of attention and memory task activation and its load-dependence suggest a beneficial effect of caffeine on the brain even though it has no overt behavior improvement. The reduction of deactivation by caffeine and its load-dependence indicate reduced facilitation from task-negative networks. Conclusion: Caffeine affects brain activity in a load-dependent manner accompanied by a disassociation between task-positive network and task-negative network.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.177-191
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• 2008

Prior studies were limited in the comparison of false belief tasks with desire tasks due to lack of consideration of level of executive functions. To compensate for this, executive functions were included in new preference-related and game-related tasks of conflicting desire. These tasks were administered to 246 preschoolers ranging from 2.5 to 4 years of age. Statistical analysis was by one-way ANOVA and repeated measures ANOVA. Results showed significant main effects depending on age and task type. Younger children lacked ability of executive function, such as inhibition and working memory. Older preschoolers averaged better scores on task performance, showing that it is difficult for younger children to control their own desires and select the contradicted view.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.605-616
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• 2011

The present study examined memory accuracy for faces with positive, negative and neutral emotional expressions to test whether their emotional content can affect visual working memory (VWM) performance. Participants remembered a set of face pictures in which facial expressions of the faces were randomly assigned from pleasant, unpleasant and neutral emotional categories. Participants' task was to report presence or absence of an emotion change in the faces by comparing the remembered set against another set of test faces displayed after a short delay. The change detection accuracies of the pleasant, unpleasant and neutral face conditions were compared under two memory exposure duration of 500ms vs. 1000ms. Under the duration of 500ms, the accuracy in the pleasant condition was higher than both unpleasant and neutral conditions. However the difference disappeared when the duration was extended to 1000ms. The results indicate that a positive facial expression can improve VWM accuracy relative to the negative or positive expressions especially when there is not enough time for forming durable VWM representations.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.359-386
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• 2010

In order to evaluate the domain-specific model and process-specific model of spatial and nonspatial working memory (WM), this study manipulated the memory load of the delayed response task and examined how the neural correlates of memory load effect was influenced by the stimulus domain (face and location) at the maintenance stage of WM using an event-related fMRI experiment. One or three face stimuli were presented as target stimuli and participants were asked to maintain the face itself (face WM) or the location of face stimuli (spatial WM). The results of recognition judgment accuracy showed no difference between face WM and spatial WM, and showed equivalent memory load effects of both WM. As a result of brian image analysis, memory load effect at maintenance stage showed that inferior, middle, and superior PFC were recruited by both face WM and spatial WM, and showed that VLPFC was the commonly activated area by both WM, supporting functional specialization of PFC by process components of WM. This study provides evidence for process-specific model in which maintenance of WM is associated with VLPFC.