NEURONAL-ACTIVITY IN HUMAN RIGHT LATERAL TEMPORAL CORTEX RELATED TO VISUOSPATIAL MEMORY AND PERCEPTION

Neuronal activity was recorded extracellularly from 22 neurons in the right lateral temporal cortex of 12 patients undergoing awake cranioto my for surgical treatment of epilepsy during tests of visuospatial fun ction. These included: measures of short-term visuospatial memory; fac e, complex figure and line matching; labeling of facial emotional expr essions; and a language task, object naming. Six neurons demonstrated significant changes during one or more of the three 1.3-s epochs follo wing test presentation. All 6 of these neurons demonstrated inhibition during short-term visuospatial memory entry, or retrieval, or both. F our of the neurons also showed significant changes during one or more matching tasks; 8 of 10 of these changes were excitatory. One neuron a lso demonstrated excitation with labeling of facial emotional expressi on and another with naming. These data demonstrate in human right late ral temporal cortex a pattern of inhibition of neuronal activity durin g short-term visuospatial memory that contrasts with excitation during other functions, particularly figure matching.