Diana Blum | PubMed Health

PubMed2006

False recognition of incidentally learned pictures and words in primary progressive aphasia.

Recognition memory was tested in patients with primary progressive aphasia (PPA), a language based dementia with relative preservation of memory for at least the first 2 years. The goal of the study was two-fold: (1) to compare true and false recognition rates for words versus pictures in patients with PPA and cognitively intact controls and (2) to determine if the semantic relatedness of distracters-to-targets influences recognition memory performance. Overall, performance of PPA patients was worse for words than pictures. PPA patients and healthy elderly controls showed similar recognition rates for studied items. However, the patients had significantly more false alarms than controls, particularly to semantically related items. This suggests that the aphasia in PPA patients contributes to their difficulty in selecting among items within a semantic class.

Aged↗

PubMed2002

Dissociating perceptual and conceptual implicit memory in multiple sclerosis patients.

Previous studies indicate that Multiple Sclerosis (MS) patients exhibit deficits in tests of explicit memory such as free recall, but show normal priming on implicit tests of memory such as word stem completion. However, the memory performance of patients with different MS disease subtypes has not been fully examined. In the current study, memory was assessed in Primary Progressive (PPMS), Relapsing Remitting (RRMS), and Secondary Progressive (SPMS) MS subgroups. Explicit memory as well as perceptual and conceptual implicit memory were examined using free recall, word fragment completion, and exemplar generation tests, respectively. All three groups of MS patients exhibited free recall deficits and normal priming on the exemplar generation test. However, the PPMS group exhibited a deficit in word fragment completion priming, whereas the RRMS and SPMS groups exhibited normal levels of priming on this task. Lesion load was assessed using magnetic resonance imaging and was negatively correlated with explicit memory performance, but it did not account for the observed deficits in perceptual implicit memory. The results indicate that PPMS patients exhibit a pattern of memory impairment that is distinct from that of the RRMS and SPMS groups. Moreover, the results indicate that perceptual implicit memory can be neurologically dissociated from conceptual implicit memory.

Adult↗