Elsevier

Brain and Language

Volume 5, Issue 3, May 1978, Pages 331-340
Brain and Language

Organization of short-term verbal memory in language areas of human cortex: Evidence from electrical stimulation☆

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Abstract

Short-term verbal memory (STVM) performance was measured during electrical stimulation of human left frontal-parietal-temporal cortex, at craniotomy under local anesthesia for the treatment of medically intractable epilepsy. The areas of cortex where stimulation alters language, as measured by object naming, are separate but adjacent to the areas where stimulation alters STVM. There are differential effects of stimulation during input, storage, and output phases of STVM at different cortical sites. These suggest that cortex adjacent to the posterior language area is a site of storage of STVM, while cortex adjacent to anterior language area is involved in retrieval from STVM.

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    ☆

    This research was presented at the 6th annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, November 1976, and was supported by NIH research grant NS 04053, awarded by NINCDS, PHS/DHEW. The author is an affiliate of the Center for Child Development and Mental Retardation, University of Washington. The procedures used for obtaining informed consent for the patients in this study were reviewed annually by the University of Washington Biomedical Sciences Review Committee in accordance with the currently applicable Public Health Service guidelines for human experimentation. Case 4 was a patient of Dr. Arthur Ward, Jr. Dr. K. Blick Hoyenya assisted in testing Case 1 and Dr. H. Whitaker in Case 6.

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