PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Ingeborg Goethals
AU  - Kurt Audenaert
AU  - Filip Jacobs
AU  - Christophe Van De Wiele
AU  - Griet Vermeir
AU  - André Vandierendonck
AU  - Cees Van Heeringen
AU  - Rudi Dierckx
TI  - Toward Clinical Application of Neuropsychological Activation Probes with SPECT: A Spatial Working Memory Task
DP  - 2002 Nov 01
TA  - Journal of Nuclear Medicine
PG  - 1426--1431
VI  - 43
IP  - 11
4099  - http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/43/11/1426.short
4100  - http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/43/11/1426.full
SO  - J Nucl Med2002 Nov 01; 43
AB  - The concept of working memory is central to theories of human cognition, because it is essential to human skills such as decision making and deductive reasoning. Although PET and functional MRI have provided robust data on the recruitment of specific pathways in working memory tasks, the experimental settings of these studies may not be transferable to a clinical situation. Hence, to develop neuropsychological SPECT activation probes that are suitable for daily clinical practice, this study reports on a neuropsychological activation task of spatial working memory under classical neuropsychological test conditions in healthy subjects. Methods: Reaction times and accuracy were measured as behavioral parameters and functional imaging data were analyzed with statistical parametric mapping to determine significant voxel-wise changes between the perception task and the memory task. Results: Subjects reacted more slowly and performed less accurately during the memory task compared with the perception task, findings that are in keeping with other neuropsychological studies. Also, the overall pattern of brain activations revealed in our experiment is consistent with the data of the literature, thereby validating our test probe. Conclusion: From a practical viewpoint, the close resemblance of the test conditions of the SPECT procedure with those of the investigation room and the relative simplicity of the task under study probably constitute major advantages for future clinical application of the SPECT procedure in patients with cognitive impairments.