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N M Hunkin

Publications and source records attributed to N M Hunkin.

25 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1993

Recency judgements in Wernicke-Korsakoff and post-encephalitic amnesia: influences of proactive interference and retention interval.

This study further examines the performance of diencephalic and temporal lobe amnesics on the recency judgement task (Parkin, Leng and Hunkin, 1990). The two patient groups were represented by patients with Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome (WKS) and post-Herpes simplex encephalitis (HSE). Experiment 1 demonstrated that poorer recency judgements by WKS patients were not due to a general proactive interference effect, but from an inability to remember which items had been designated targets on a given trial. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the superior performance of the HSE group was not attributable to a putative faster forgetting rate. In addition, the study found no relationship between recency judgements and degree of frontal lobe impairment. It is concluded that diencephalic damage has a particular effect on the ability to make recency judgements and that this represents a fundamental difference between diencephalic and temporal lobe amnesia. Theoretical interpretations of this difference are discussed.

Alcohol Amnestic Disorder↗
PubMed1992

Naming impairments following recovery from herpes simplex encephalitis: category-specific?

An apparently clear case of category-specific naming impairment selectively affecting animals was detected in a patient who had recovered from herpes simplex encephalitis. However, subsequent investigation demonstrated that these category-specific effects could be eliminated by controlling simultaneously for three factors in picture naming: word frequency, concept familiarity, and visual complexity. The results emphasize the importance of controlling for all factors pertinent to picture naming when attempting to demonstrate category specificity in picture naming. Further testing indicated that deficits were also apparent when naming to definition was required, and some impairment in the ability to answer questions about objects and living things was also noted. Theoretical implications of these data are considered.

Anomia↗
PubMed1991

Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome of nonalcoholic origin.

We describe a patient who developed a severe loss of memory following intravenous feeding and intestinal surgery. The pattern of both anterograde and retrograde memory impairment and frontal pathology is shown to be comparable with that observed in patients with Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome of an alcoholic etiology. The data strengthen the view that the essential characteristics of the Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome are not dependent on a prior history of chronic alcoholism. Implications of these data for the interpretation of alcoholic Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome are considered.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Memory loss following radiotherapy for nasal pharyngeal carcinoma--an unusual presentation of amnesia.

In this article we describe a patient who developed amnesia several years after receiving a second course of radiotherapy treatment for nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC). Detailed assessment of memory indicated a marked anterograde impairment for verbal material with less impaired non-verbal memory. A dense retrograde deficit was also present, reflected in both poor event memory and loss of general knowledge. Performance on other tests indicated a mild intellectual deficit but no other cognitive impairments. The findings indicate a striking memory disorder arising from late temporal lobe necrosis. These findings stress the importance of assessing neuropsychological sequelae when evaluating the long-term outcome of radiotherapy for NPC and other cancers of the head and neck.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Differential sensitivity to context in diencephalic and temporal lobe amnesia.

This study compares diencephalic and temporal lobe amnesics on a memory task in which the encoding of temporal context is essential for accurate performance. On trial 1 subjects were shown four pictures and asked to discriminate them from distractors one minute later. On the three subsequent trials the same procedure was used except that items previously used as distractors became targets and vice versa. The results showed that both groups performed close to ceiling on trial 1. On trials 2, 3, and 4, however, the diencephalic group showed poorer accuracy than the temporal lobe group. These results indicate that the diencephalic amnesics have greater difficulty encoding distinctive contexts across trials 2, 3, and 4 than do the temporal lobe group. Explanations of this difference are discussed briefly.

Alcohol Amnestic Disorder↗
PubMed1990

Contextual cueing effects in the remote memory of alcoholic Korsakoff patients and normal subjects.

This study examines the effects of contextual cueing on the remote memory of alcoholic Korsakoff patients and normal subjects. Naming of personalities who became famous in each of the five decades beginning 1935 was tested under two conditions: "no-context", in which minimal extraneous cues to identification were provided, and "context", where clear extraneous cues were available. Normal subjects performed better than Korsakoff patients, showed no evidence of a temporal gradient, and exhibited a contextual cueing advantage across all decades. In contrast, Korsakoff patients demonstrated a marked temporal gradient, and the contextual cueing advantage declined systematically as more recent decades were sampled. Further analyses demonstrated that the differential pattern of deficits shown by Korsakoffs and controls was not attributable to absolute differences in performance level. Theoretical implications of these data for explanations of Korsakoff retrograde amnesia are discussed.

Alcohol Amnestic Disorder↗