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Zahid, Hafsa B.

Working memory plays a key role in a person’s ability for interactions, reasoning and decision making. People who suffer from working memory deficiencies can struggle in their day to day life. In order to develop treatment options that target the regions of the brain responsible for the deficiency, functional brain networks that respond to task difficulty in working memory must be found. In this investigation, an extension to the Constrained Principal Component Analysis for fMRI (fMRI-CPCA) program was explored, to include information about the difficulty of a task before extracting relevant networks. A linear load dependence hypothesis was applied. Two working memory studies were analysed, and the functional brain networks, as well as load dependence over time, are reported. Both studies showed finer network decomposition than using task timing information alone. Specifically, the Internal Attention Network was separated out in this analysis, where previously task-merging was required to extract it. In the future, nonlinear load dependence hypotheses, as well as networks that respond to task timing but not to difficulty, should be investigated.

Text

University of British Columbia. PHYS 449

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0402621

Science, Faculty of; Physics and Astronomy, Department of

Undergraduate

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