ArticleBrain structure & function2023
Prospective memory: the combined impact of cognitive load and task focality.
Article in Brain structure & function, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 10 citations in OpenAlex.
- Mechanisms of Forgetting: A Systematic Review of Neurocognitive and Clinical Determinants.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2026Pooled it
- Quantifying the effects of prospective memory and ongoing task difficulty on capacity sharing and cognitive control.Memory & cognition · 2026Article
- Investigating the role of cognitive load on prospective memory performance across event and mixed cues retrievals.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Differential contributions of working memory and inhibitory control to prospective memory detection and retrieval.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Postural stability reveals cognitive load of holding an intention in mind.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Prestimulus functional connectivity reflects attention orientation in a prospective memory task: A magnetoencephalographic (MEG) study.PloS one · 2025Article
- Investigating Prospective Memory Processes: ERP Evidence from Novel Semantic Judgment Tasks.Neuroscience insights · 2025Article
- State-dependent memory mechanisms insights from neural circuits and clinical implications.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2025Review
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Prospective Memory (PM) entails a set of executive processes primarily associated with the activation of frontal and parietal regions. Both the number of PM-targets to be monitored (i.e. task load) and the relationship between the type of PM-targets and the ongoing (ONG) task (i.e. task focality) can impact executive monitoring and PM performance. In the present imaging study, we manipulated load and focality of an event-based PM task to test the hypothesis that common resources engage in situations requiring high levels of cognitive control: that is, in high-load (i.e. monitor multiple PM-targets) and non-focal conditions (i.e. monitor at the same time letters' identity and color). We investigated monitoring-related and detection-related processes by assessing behavior and brain activity separately for ONG trials (monitoring) and PM-targets (detection). At the behavioral level, we found a significant interaction between load and focality during detection, with slowest reaction times for focal, high-load PM-targets. The imaging analyses of the detection phase revealed the activation of the left intraparietal sulcus in the high-load conditions. Both in the monitoring and the detection phases, we found overlapping effects of non-focality and low-load in the fusiform gyrus. Our results suggest that under low-load conditions, cognitive control operates via early selection mechanisms in the ventral occipito-temporal cortex. By contrast, high-load conditions entail control at later processing stages within the dorsal parietal cortex. We conclude that load and focality operate via different mechanisms, with the level of task load largely determining how cognitive control selects the most relevant information.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.