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A functional MRI imaging scan of the brains of the participants revealed that the more difficult working memory task engaged their prefrontal cortex, which was to be expected given that the prefrontal cortex houses brain regions most involved in working memory. But the scan also revealed that a face processing region in the parietal cortex became active when the participants were preoccupied with the harder working memory tasks remembering the random order of digits. In other words, even though the participants were told explicitly to ignore the faces flashed on the screen, their brains could not follow those instructions when they were burdened by a tricky working memory task.