Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39271594›Full record

ReviewCognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience2025

The role of variation in phonological and semantic working memory capacities in sentence comprehension: neural evidence from healthy and brain-damaged individuals.

Randi C Martin, Qiuhai Yue, Rachel Zahn, Yu Lu

Abstract readReview
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In one paragraph

Review in Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
3citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

3 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Article
  3. Introduction to the special issue on individual differences in memory modulation.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2025
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Randi C MartinRice University, Houston, TX, USA.ORCID 0000-0001-9133-8266
Qiuhai YueSchool of Psychology, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China. qyue@szu.edu.cn.ORCID 0000-0003-4136-054X
Rachel ZahnRice University, Houston, TX, USA.
Yu LuRice University, Houston, TX, USA.

Funding

Language and neural recovery from stroke: Role of selection and working memoryR01DC014976 · NIDCD · BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE · PI SCHNUR, TATIANA TAMARA · 2016 to 2020
$2.6M
NIDCD NIH HHS R01 DC014976
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Research on the role of working memory (WM) in language processing has typically focused on WM for phonological information. However, considerable behavioral evidence supports the existence of a separate semantic WM system that plays a greater role in language processing. We review the neural evidence that supports the distinction between phonological and semantic WM capacities and discuss how individual differences in these capacities relate to sentence processing. In terms of neural substrates, findings from multivariate functional MRI for healthy participants and voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping for brain-damaged participants imply that the left supramarginal gyrus supports phonological WM, whereas the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and angular gyrus support semantic WM. In sentence comprehension, individual variation in semantic but not phonological WM related to performance in resolving semantic information and the LIFG region implicated in semantic WM showed fMRI activation during the resolution of semantic interference. Moreover, variation for brain-damaged participants in the integrity of a fiber tract supporting semantic WM had a greater relation to the processing of complex sentences than did the integrity of fiber tracts supporting phonological WM. Overall, the neural findings provide converging evidence regarding the distinction of these two capacities and the greater contribution of individual differences in semantic than phonological WM capacity to sentence processing.

Indexed as

BrainComprehensionMemory, Short-TermPhoneticsSemanticsBrain MappingHumansIndividualityMagnetic Resonance ImagingInferior parietalLanguage comprehensionLesionSemanticsShort-term memoryWorking memory

Identifiers

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

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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.