Rebecca Jo Chambers1, William M. Brooks1,
JoAnn Lierman1, Laura E. Martin1, Amanda Bruce1,2,
Brenda A. Kirchhoff3, Monica Kurylo, Linda Ladesich, George
Varghese, Cary R. Savage1
1Hoglund Brain Imaging Center,
University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, KS, United States; 2University
of Missouri - Kansas City; 3University of Missouri - St. Louis
Following
TBI, memory functioning is frequently disrupted, and patients may not benefit
from cognitive rehabilitation therapy.
In an fMRI study, participants responses were measured during a
verbal learning task of semantically related or unrelated word lists. They were asked to first remember the words
with no further instruction, and then were cued to the semantic nature of the
task. Both groups benefitted from
semantic cueing, but showed differential brain responses in left DLPFC, a
region implicated in working memory.
This finding may suggest that after TBI, patients must compensate with
additional neural processing in DLPFC to benefit from semantic cueing.
Keywords