Verbal memory, in cognitive psychology, is memory of words and other abstractions involving language. A variety of tests is used to gauge verbal memory, including learning lists or pairs of words, or recalling a story after it has been told. Verbal memory deals with memory of spoken information.
Verbal encoding
Verbal encoding is the interpretation of verbal stimuli and appears to be strongly left-lateralized in the medial temporal lobe of the human brain; however, its functional neuroanatomy can vary between individuals.
[A. Jansen, A.; Sehlmeyer, C.; Pfleiderer, B.; Sommer, J.; Konrad, C.; Zwitserlood, P.; Knecht S. "Assessment of Verbal Memory by fMRI: Lateralization and Functional Neuroanatomy". Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery. Volume 111, Issue 1. pp. 57–62.]
Verbal recall
Verbal recall is the recollection of verbal information. Although left-lateralization is typically associated with language, studies suggest that symmetrical bi-lateralization of language in the brain is advantageous to verbal recall.
[Catani*,†,‡,§, Marco; Allin†, Matthew P.G.; Husain¶, Masud; Pugliese*, Lucas; Mesulam‖, Marsel M.; Murray†, Robin M.; Jones**, Derek K. "Symmetries in Human Brain Language Pathways Correlate with Verbal Recall. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.]
Mechanism
Verbal memory and verbal working memory are thought to depend on reverberating neural activity that maintains word representations in the absence of external input.
[Fuster, J. M. (1997). The Prefrontal Cortex: Anatomy, Physiology, and Neuropsychology of the Frontal Lobe. Lippincott-Raven. ISBN 978-0397518494.] This reverberation is facilitated by dense cortico-cortical connections in the perisylvian region, particularly the arcuate fasciculus, which is more developed in humans than in non-human primates.
[Rilling, J. K., Glasser, M. F., Preuss, T. M., Ma, X., Zhao, T., Hu, X., & Behrens, T. E. (2008). The evolution of the arcuate fasciculus revealed with comparative DTI. Nature Neuroscience, 11(4), 426–428. doi:10.1038/nn2072. PMID 18344993.] Brain-constrained neural network models suggest that such connectivity supports sustained activity patterns and thereby enables robust verbal working memory, a prerequisite for human vocabulary building.
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