Revista Neuropsicología, Neuropsiquiatría y. Neurociencias, 8 (1), 1-21. - Baddeley, A. (1983). Memoria de trabajo. Phil Trans. R. Soc. Londres. B302, 311-324.
Working memory In every study of human cognitive evolution, working memory plays an important role. However, we only approach it with the model of constructs that Psychology has had to develop in order to move forward. It can be defined as the ability to temporarily keep information active for use in different cognitive activities such as understanding or thinking (Pelegrina et al., 2016). Keeps information online, orientation, attention, inhibition and monitoring of behavior in reference to motivational and emotional states of the body. It is located in the LPF, a heteromodal association area very interconnected with a distributed network of cortical and subcortical regions (Tirapu-Ustárroz and Muñoz-Céspedes, 2005). Their own functional characteristics have been highlighted by various authors as an important cause of our cognitive evolution and the start of behavior considered to be modern (Wynn and Coolidge 2011). All the authors agree with such definition and explanation of the cognitive process that it entails. But working memory is one of the cognitive constructs used to explain human cognition. At the beginning of Psychology, and faced with the need to analyze the human mind through their actions, the first psychologists lacked a method to apply in their studies. Since then a series of conceptualizations have been made (logical and cognitive organization based on personal knowledge of the problem to be studied and, therefore, subjective to some degree) about the cognitive characteristics observed in human beings, which are called constructs. The scientific concepts used in psychology (intelligence, cognitive functions, working memory, frustration, unconscious, emotions, ego, phobias, anxiety, motivation, etc.) do not have a concrete existence similar to physical entities that lend themselves to observation sensitive. They are concepts that go beyond empirical observation and often express theoretical assumptions. Such concepts are currently called constructs or nonobservational concepts to differentiate them from the observational ones (Bunge, 1973). The constructs do not have immediate empirical referents. No one has seen or touched anyone's intelligence, but it can be inferred from the way a person is able to solve certain problems in relation to the way others solve them. General characteristics of working memory You can establish a series of properties that will characterize this construct. I will highlight the following: - Your capacity is limited. We only store 7 ± 2 elements. - It's active. It not only stores information, but manipulates it and transforms it. - Its contents are permanently updated. - It is modulated by the dorsolateral frontal cortex.
In the same way, the functions of the working memory in general are known. Its role in the thought and understanding of language is varied and fundamental for an adequate cognitive functioning. - The working memory is needed to maintain the objectives and subgoals in the resolution of problems. - The individual differences in the resolution of problems can be due to different capacities in the working memory. - One aspect of the working memory capacity may be the processing speed. - A reasonable prediction of this model is that an interference in working memory translates into worse performance in reasoning tasks. - The working memory is also necessary in the compression of the language. + To store partial information about a spoken or read text while the rest is encoded. + Comprehension processes can work on temporarily stored information to produce a coherent meaning for the full text. + Neuropsychological evidence that working memory is necessary for understanding sentences, but only when the phrase is complex enough so that some words have to be kept in memory while the rest of the sentence is perceived. Neurophysiological explanations Everything said above can be observed in human behavior, so there is no doubt about its existence, but how the brain is structured for its production we only have theories (constructs). Attempts to analyze these constructs began to be made with the knowledge of the last century, with very little interdisciplinarity, exposing the resulting theories to the scientific community for its criticism, acceptance and use or desafectación. The truth is that little else could be done. Such explanations were intended to clarify the functioning of the brain for such functions, but their phylogenetic and ontogenetic relation to the genus Homo was almost always omitted. One of its main controversies was its neurological functionality in the brain. Thus, basically two large groups of functional explanations were established (Pelegrina et al., 2016): I.- Operational or working memory constitutes a system with its own cognitive processes. They are usually located in the LPF and would have some anatomical and functional autonomy. They are models based on the existence of multi-store for different modal sensations. In modular domainspecific models, the prefrontal cortex is organized so that different areas are responsible for the storage of different types of information. The Baddeley and Hitch model of working memory (Baddeley and Hitch, 1974, Baddeley, 2000) includes storage components called buffers (loop or phonological loop, buffer or visual-spatial agenda, Buffer or
episodic buffer) and information processing (central executive). The central executive system (SEC) is a system by means of which cognitive tasks are carried out in which the working memory intervenes, and which carries out operations of control and selection of strategies (Tirapu-Ustárroz and Muñoz-Céspedes, 2005). II.- It is a subset of activated representations of long-term memory that shares a series of processes with other psychological functions. They would be placed in the location of long-term memory (areas of parietotemporo-occipital association) and, after their activation, they would pass to the LPF for their cognitive processing. Working memory is identified with the region of long-term memory that has reached a certain level of activation (Cowan, 1988). Goldman-Rakic (1996) has proposed a new understanding of working memory that is based on the implications of the functional architecture of the prefrontal cortex. For this author, this brain region would play a preponderant role in the functions of working memory and should be understood as a network of integration of areas, each of which would be specialized in a specific domain. Thus, each subsystem of the working memory would be interconnected with different cortical areas of specific domain. The prefrontal areas related to the visuospatial agenda would be connected to the posterior parietal lobe, and the phonological loop with temporal areas related to the language (Wernicke's area, arcuate fasciculus, etc.). This model explains how independent and simple systems can work in concert to give rise to complex behavior (Tirapu-Ustárroz and MuñozCéspedes, 2005). Discussion From the working or operational memory, LPF researcher Joaquín Fuster (2015) asks: Why is working memory considered a special type of memory instead of a memory state? The question is valid when admitting that we are talking about constructs, whose nature, origin and functional relationship we do not know. In addition to working memory and long-term memory are types of memory that work based on their activation. The working memory could be seen as a state of consciousness or the ability of the human being to process information efficiently externally, which is done through language. It could be a functional-linguistic base memory. Baddeley (1983) clearly stated that working memory is the temporary retention of recent information for the performance of a task or the solution of a problem. However, the future perspective of working memory is usually ignored and, with it, the essence of its definition and the key to understanding its brain mechanisms. In fact, working memory is essentially prospective (of the immediate or farther future), like other executive functions of the prefrontal cortex. Its functions are prospective and
preadaptive, since it facilitates the action to be carried out in the best conditions. The evidence now is overwhelming that working memory consists of an activated long-term memory that has been updated to achieve a goal in the near future. The update can be triggered by an external or internal stimulus, but the content of the working memory is not only that stimulus but also its history. Therefore, working memory is not a special memory form or system, but the active state of a cortical network temporarily reconfigured from long-term memory to a goal in the near future. Conclusions (if they can be established) We can establish a basic functional structure of the brain, where the parieto-temporo-occipital association area would be the receiver and integrator of external sensory inputs (primary visual, sensory and auditory areas). This integrated information (long-term memory), which can be associated (symbolized) by appropriate sounds or signs (very related to language), depending on the attention processes, would have to pass to the frontal lobe for its emotional correlation, processing rational and the production of a motor response if necessary. The nervous pathways that can perform this function are not well known, but we can highlight the departure of two important areas: the Precuneo or Precuña and its connections with the Prefrontal Lobe (Bruner et al., 2014) and the Wernicke area and the important evolution of the arcuate fasciculus, which reaches both the Broca area and the Prefrontal Lobe (Rilling, et al., 2008). In these studies the ontogeny and phylogeny of these processes have seldom been taken into account and, in any interdisciplinary study, one must always assess the how of the formation of such constructs. Depending on the quality of the long-term memory (eg language), the executive functions of the Prefrontal Lobe may be structured. There are indications that metacognitive executive functions (including working memory) depend significantly on culture and cultural instruments, since they have been found to be significantly correlated with educational level (Gómez-Pérez and Ostrosky-Solís, 2006; Ardila and Ostrosky-Solís, 2008).
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