FUNCTIONAL-ORGANIZATION OF SPATIAL AND NONSPATIAL WORKING-MEMORY PROCESSING WITHIN THE HUMAN LATERAL FRONTAL-CORTEX

The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to demons trate that performance of visual spatial and visual nonspatial working memory tasks involve the same regions of the lateral prefrontal corte x when all factors unrelated to the type of stimulus material are appr opriately controlled. These results provide evidence that spatial and nonspatial working memory may not be mediated, respectively, by mid-do rsolateral and mid-ventrolateral regions of the frontal lobe, as widel y assumed, and support the alternative notion that specific regions of the lateral prefrontal cortex make identical executive functional con tributions to both spatial and nonspatial working memory.