Journal article
Joshua B. Tan, Isabella F Orlando, Christopher Whyte, Annie G. Bryant, B. Munn, Giulia Baracchini, Maedbh King, Claire O'Callaghan, E. Müller, James M. Shine
bioRxiv, 2025
bioRxiv, 2025
Semantic Scholar
DOI
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APA
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Tan, J. B., Orlando, I. F., Whyte, C., Bryant, A. G., Munn, B., Baracchini, G., … Shine, J. M. (2025). Cerebellar and Subcortical Contributions to Working Memory Manipulation. BioRxiv.
Chicago/Turabian
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Tan, Joshua B., Isabella F Orlando, Christopher Whyte, Annie G. Bryant, B. Munn, Giulia Baracchini, Maedbh King, Claire O'Callaghan, E. Müller, and James M. Shine. “Cerebellar and Subcortical Contributions to Working Memory Manipulation.” bioRxiv (2025).
MLA
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Tan, Joshua B., et al. “Cerebellar and Subcortical Contributions to Working Memory Manipulation.” BioRxiv, 2025.
BibTeX Click to copy
@article{joshua2025a,
title = {Cerebellar and Subcortical Contributions to Working Memory Manipulation},
year = {2025},
journal = {bioRxiv},
author = {Tan, Joshua B. and Orlando, Isabella F and Whyte, Christopher and Bryant, Annie G. and Munn, B. and Baracchini, Giulia and King, Maedbh and O'Callaghan, Claire and Müller, E. and Shine, James M.}
}
Abstract
Working memory enables us to temporarily store and manipulate information, a crucial function for problem-solving. However, most working memory models emphasize cortical interactions ignoring contributions from subcortical and cerebellar regions. Given the dense connectivity between the cerebellum, subcortex, and cortex, we hypothesize that these regions provide unique contributions during working memory manipulation. We tested this hypothesis using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to measure blood oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) activity during a mental rotation task, where participants judged whether rotated pairs of three-dimensional stimuli were identical. Our results revealed a distributed network spanning the cortex, subcortex, and cerebellum that differentiates rotated from non-rotated stimuli and correct from incorrect responses. BOLD recruitment in these regions increased with larger angles of rotation. We observed delayed responses in premotor, subcortical, and cerebellar regions during incorrect trials. These findings suggest that cerebellar and subcortical regions support working memory manipulation, highlighting a broader mechanism by which distributed brain regions interact to coordinate higher cognitive functions.