A comment on the functional localization of the phonological storage subsystem of working memory.

Working memory, as defined by Baddeley and Hitch, is an interactive set of cognitive processes responsible for holding information online and available for analysis. Part of that system is a specialized subsystem devoted to maintaining verbal information; the verbal "slave" subsystem has as a core component a phonological store. For many years, the anatomical locus of the phonological store has been thought to be in the supramarginal and angular gyri of the speech dominant hemisphere, and functional neuroimaging studies provide broad support for this localization. However, a finer grained analysis of published experiments reveals two possible foci for the phonological store within the parietal lobe, neither of which has a pattern of functional activation that is fully consistent with the Baddeley and Hitch model. The purpose of the present paper is to review several studies relevant to the question of the localization of the phonological store and to suggest possible reasons the results are discrepant.     

Male alcoholics,secondary psychopathy and Eysenck's theory of personality

The scores of several samples of male alcoholics and others on the MAC Scale (an MMPI-derived scale for the differentiation of male alcohol abusers from non-substance-abusing male psychiatric outpatients) are summarized, and the responses of the false negatives and false positives from the scale's standardization samples are analyzed. The following 7conclusions were reached: (1) There are two broad classes of male alcoholics—those who fall into the E + N + quadrant of secondary psychopathy and those who fall into the E - N + quadrant of neurotic introversion; (2) Unselected runs of male alcoholics populate these two quadrants in a quite stable ratio of 17 to 3, respectively; (3) Pari passu, Eysenck's placement of alcoholics in the E + N + quadrant will be upheld in approximately 85% of the cases while those who hold that alcoholics are ‘dysthymics who also drink too much’ will find themselves in error in approximately similar degree.     

The phonological-similarity effect differentiates between two working memory tasks

Working memory is a set of interactive cognitive processes that maintain information on–line and available for analysis. Part of the system is specialized for maintaining verbal information, a core component of which is thought to be a phonological store. On the basis of the study of patients with acquired brain lesions, this store has been localized to the supramarginal and angular gyri of the speech–dominant hemisphere, and some functional neuroimaging studies support this localization. However, other imaging studies localize the phonological store in a more dorsal region of the parietal lobe. To reconcile these findings, we examined the phonological–similarity effect in two different tasks. A phonological–similarity effect was observed only in the task that involved sequential presentation and explicit verbal rehearsal. We conclude that at least one possible source of the differences in brain activation between different working memory tasks may be differences in phonological processing.