Neuropsychological Predictors of BOLD Response During a Spatial Working Memory Task in Adolescents: What Can Performance Tell Us About fMRI Response Patterns?

The relationship between standardized neuropsychological test performance and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) response during cognitive tasks is largely unknown. This exploratory investigation examined the relationship between neuropsychological test performance and fMRI response to a spatial working memory (SWM) task among 49 typically developing adolescents. Participants were administered a variety of neuropsychological tests in the domains of working memory, visuospatial skills, executive functioning, attention, learning and memory, visuomotor skills and processing speed, and language functioning. Neuropsychological domain scores were used to predict fMRI response during a SWM task. Results suggest that in many brain regions, neuropsychological performance negatively predicts fMRI response, suggesting that those teens with better neuropsychological abilities required fewer neural resources to adequately perform the task. This study provides further understanding of how neuropsychological abilities relate to neural activity during fMRI tasks, and provides an important link between neuropsychological and fMRI research. This study was supported by grants R21 AA12519 and R01 AA13419 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Bethesda, MD (Dr. Tapert) and the UCSD Fellowship in Biological Psychiatry and Neuroscience. Portions of this study were presented at the annual meeting for the International Neuropsychological Society, February 2003, Honolulu, Hawaii. We would like to thank Greg Brown, Sandra Kindermann, MJ Meloy, Lisa Caldwell, and Lauren Killeen for their valuable contributions to this research.