The Relationships Between Episodic Memory, Working Memory, and Executive Functions: The Contribution of the Prefrontal Cortex

The purpose of this article is to review recent data regarding the relationships between the prefrontal cortex and memory processes. Numerous questions are addressed: are the memory impairments following a frontal lesion qualitatively different from those following other kinds of lesions? Do the memory deficits following a frontal lesion impair specifically memory functioning or are they secondary to more general disorders affecting the strategic organization of the cognitive processes? Is the link between some memory impairments and the frontal areas exclusive or not? The article also reviews the neuroimaging studies aimed to identify which frontal regions underlie the working memory and episodic memory processes and the relations between them. Taken as a whole, these studies demonstrated that similar cerebral areas are involved in tasks requiring working memory and episodic memory processes as well as executive functions. These data could indicate that these quite different tasks require the intervention of similar cognitive mechanisms