Associations between abstract working memory abilities and brain activity underlying long-term recognition of auditory sequences

Abstract

Memory is a complex cognitive process comprised by several subsystems, namely short- and long-term memory and working memory (WM). Previous research has shown that adequate interaction between subsystems is crucial for successful memory processes such as encoding, storage and manipulation of information. However, few studies have investigated the relationship between different subsystems at the behavioral and neural levels. Thus, here we assessed the relationship between individual WM abilities and brain activity underlying the recognition of previously memorized auditory sequences. First, recognition of previously memorized versus novel auditory sequences was associated with a widespread network of brain areas comprising the cingulate gyrus, hippocampus, insula, inferior temporal cortex, frontal operculum, and orbitofrontal cortex. Second, we observed positive correlations between brain activity underlying auditory sequence recognition and WM. We showed a sustained positive correlation in the medial cingulate gyrus, a brain area which was widely involved in the auditory sequence recognition. Remarkably, we also observed positive correlations in the inferior temporal, temporal-fusiform, and postcentral gyri, brain areas which were not strongly associated to auditory sequence recognition. In conclusion, we discovered positive correlations between WM abilities and brain activity underlying long-term recognition of auditory sequences, providing new evidence on the relationship between memory subsystems. Furthermore, we showed that high WM performers recruited a larger brain network including areas associated to visual processing (i.e., inferior temporal, temporal-fusiform and postcentral gyri) for successful auditory memory recognition.

Spatiotemporal brain hierarchies of auditory memory recognition and predictive coding

“…Our results are coherent with the ones reported by Bonetti et al 42–46 , which showed a large network of brain areas involved in the recognition of previously memorized auditory sequences. Specifically, they highlighted the crucial role of the auditory cortex, insula, hippocampus, cingulate gyrus, basal ganglia, frontal operculum, and orbitofrontal cortices.…”

“…A relevant difference between Bonetti et al 43, 44 and Fernández Rubio et al 45, 46 and our findings is related to the frequency of the evoked responses. While these studies showed that the recognition of the temporal sequences was associated with activity in the cingulate, hippocampus, insula, and inferior temporal cortex in a very slow frequency (0.1 – 1 Hz) accompanying the whole duration of the sequences, here we observed a distinct, faster response to each tone of the sequence.…”

“…Eighty-three participants performed an old/new auditory recognition task 42–46 during magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings. After learning a short musical piece, participants were presented with 135 five-tone musical excerpts lasting 1750 ms each and were requested to state whether each excerpt belonged to the original music (‘memorized’ sequence (M), old) or it was a varied musical sequence (‘novel’ sequence (N), new) ( Figure 1a ).…”

“…This was calculated for the four pairs of experimental conditions described above. The signed-rank test against chance level and cluster-based Monte-Carlo simulations 42–44, 46, 47 (MCS; α = .01, MCS p-value = .001) showed that the performance of the classifier was significantly above chance even a few hundreds of milliseconds beyond the diagonal, for all pairs of conditions. Notably, the neural difference between M and N was comparable across diverse musical tones, as shown by the recurrent patterns depicted in Figure 2c .…”

Age and musical training effects on auditory short-term, long-term, and working memory

“…Furthermore, we found specific effects of aging on STM capacity for rhythmic sequences, but not for melodic sequences, and on LTM ability for identifying new sequences, but not for recognizing old sequences. Following previous studies on the spatiotemporal dynamics of memory [66][67][68][69] , our future research will focus on correlating these differences in memory capacity to the patterns of brain activity and connectivity during short-term auditory memory recognition.…”