Analysis of brain areas activated while using strategies to improve the working memory capacity

Abstract

Improvement of the working memory capacity is expected to enhance the reasoning task and reading comprehension abilities. The aim of this study was to investigate effective methods for improving the working memory capacity. We used the reading span test (RST) as a task and examined the types of strategies that can be used to process tasks as well as strategies that may improve working memory capacity. In this experiment, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to observe the brain areas activated in subjects during RST. We examined the high-span subjects (HSS) in the preliminary RST and found that the HSS used a scene imagery strategy when performing RST. The low-span subjects (LSS) were trained to learn the same strategy that was used by HSS. We observed that the similar brain areas as those in HSS were activated in LSS and their RST scores were improved. © Springer International Publishing 2013.