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PubMed2003

Autobiographical memory and autonoetic consciousness: triple dissociation in neurodegenerative diseases.

Few studies have investigated autobiographical amnesia in neurodegenerative diseases and yet these pathologies are particularly relevant when addressing the issue of theories of long-term memory consolidation. According to the standard model, the medial temporal lobe (MTL) is involved in the storage and retrieval of episodic and semantic memories during a limited period of years. An alternative model, the multiple trace theory (MTT), suggests that the capacity of the MTL to recollect episodic memories is of a more permanent nature. In order to test these models, we studied three groups of patients with a neurodegenerative disease predominantly affecting different cerebral structures namely the MTL (13 patients in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease) and the neocortex involving either the anterior temporal lobe (10 patients with semantic dementia) or the frontal lobe (15 patients with the frontal variant of frontotemporal dementia, fv-FTD). We compared these groups of patients with control subjects using an original and reliable autobiographical memory task designed specially to assess strictly episodic memory over the entire lifespan. This task, developed on the basis of the most up-to-date definition of episodic memory, takes into account the ability to mentally travel back in time and re-experience the source of acquisition (remembering, i.e. autonoetic consciousness) via the remember/know paradigm. All three groups of patients produced strongly contrasting profiles of autobiographical amnesia (regardless of the nature of the memories), which also differed markedly from that of the control group: temporally graded memory loss in Alzheimer's disease, showing that remote memories are better preserved than recent ones; memory loss with a reversed gradient in semantic dementia; and memory loss without any clear gradient in fv-FTD. Most strictly episodic memories (i.e. unique, specific in time and space, and detailed) were impaired, whatever the time interval considered in the three groups, though the memory loss was ungraded in Alzheimer's disease and fv-FTD, and temporally graded in semantic dementia, sparing the most recent period. A deficit of autonoetic consciousness emerged in Alzheimer's disease and fv-FTD, but not in semantic dementia, though beyond the most recent 12-month period, the latter group could not justify their subjective sense of remembering to the same extent as the controls, in terms of the actual contextual information retrieved-phenomenological, spatial or temporal details. Our results demonstrate that autobiographical amnesia varies according to the nature of the memories under consideration and the locus of cerebral dysfunction. They are discussed in the light of the two competing models of long-term memory consolidation and recent conceptions of autobiographical recollection: new insights based on current concepts of episodic memories challenge the standard model and tend to support the MTT instead.

Aged↗

PubMed2005

Mouse models of impaired fear memory exhibit deficits in amygdalar LTP.

Inbred mouse strains have different genetic backgrounds that can result in impairments of synaptic plasticity and memory. They are valuable models for probing the mechanisms of memory impairments. We examined fear memory in several inbred strains, along with synaptic plasticity that may underlie fear memory. Long-term potentiation (LTP) is a form of activity-dependent synaptic plasticity that is a candidate cellular mechanism for some forms of learning and memory. Strains with impaired contextual or cued fear memory may have selective LTP deficits in different hippocampal subregions, or in the amygdala. We measured fear memory and its extinction in five inbred strains: C57BL/6NCrlBR (B6), A/J, BALB/cByJ (BALB), C57BL/10J (B10), and SM/J (SM). We also measured LTP in the basolateral amygdala and in the hippocampal Schaeffer collateral-commissural (SC) and medial perforant pathways (MPP). All strains exhibited intact contextual fear memory 24 h post-training, but cued fear memory was impaired in strains A/J, BALB, and SM. At 1 h post-training, both contextual and cued fear memory deficits were more widespread: all strains except for B6 and B10 showed impairments of both types of memory. Contextual fear extinction was impaired in BALB and SM. We found that amygdalar LTP was reduced in strains A/J and BALB, but SC LTP was intact in all strains (except for a selective multi-train LTP impairment in BALB). MPPLTP was similar in all five strains. Thus, reduced amygdalar LTP is correlated with impaired cued fear memory in strains A/J and BALB. Also, hippocampal SC LTP is more strongly correlated with 24-h (long-term) than with 1-h (short-term) contextual fear memory. In this first conjoint study of amygdala-dependent memory and amygdalar LTP in inbred mice, we identified specific hippocampal and amygdalar LTP deficits that correlate with fear memory impairments. These deficits should be considered when selecting inbred strains for genetic modification.

Amygdala↗

PubMed2004

Antipsychotic and anticholinergic effects on two types of spatial memory in schizophrenia.

Spatial memory is of interest in schizophrenia because of widespread impairments in adaptive functioning, including independent living skills. Short-term spatial memory is impaired in this disease, whereas spatial reference memory, a longer-term spatial memory, has not been evaluated. Animal studies have demonstrated that anticholinergics impair short-term spatial memory but not spatial reference memory. The effects of haloperidol and risperidone on these two types of spatial memory were evaluated in a double-blind randomized comparison in inpatients with schizophrenia. It was predicted that risperidone would have a greater beneficial effect on spatial working memory than haloperidol. Computerized measures of spatial working memory and spatial reference memory were developed based on animal assessment of these functions. Subjects with schizophrenia were assessed during a medication-free period and again following 4 weeks of fixed-dose treatment. Risperidone, compared to haloperidol, improved spatial working memory performance, an effect that became nonsignificant when benztropine co-treatment was controlled. There were no treatment effects on spatial reference memory performance. Consistent with animal studies, benztropine impaired spatial working memory but not spatial reference memory. The relative benefits of risperidone on spatial working memory performance were largely explained by differential benztropine treatment for the haloperidol-treated subjects.

Adult↗

PubMed2000

The brain decade in debate: I. Neurobiology of learning and memory.

This article is a transcription of an electronic symposium in which some active researchers were invited by the Brazilian Society for Neuroscience and Behavior (SBNeC) to discuss the last decade's advances in neurobiology of learning and memory. The way different parts of the brain are recruited during the storage of different kinds of memory (e.g., short-term vs long-term memory, declarative vs procedural memory) and even the property of these divisions were discussed. It was pointed out that the brain does not really store memories, but stores traces of information that are later used to create memories, not always expressing a completely veridical picture of the past experienced reality. To perform this process different parts of the brain act as important nodes of the neural network that encode, store and retrieve the information that will be used to create memories. Some of the brain regions are recognizably active during the activation of short-term working memory (e.g., prefrontal cortex), or the storage of information retrieved as long-term explicit memories (e.g., hippocampus and related cortical areas) or the modulation of the storage of memories related to emotional events (e.g., amygdala). This does not mean that there is a separate neural structure completely supporting the storage of each kind of memory but means that these memories critically depend on the functioning of these neural structures. The current view is that there is no sense in talking about hippocampus-based or amygdala-based memory since this implies that there is a one-to-one correspondence. The present question to be solved is how systems interact in memory. The pertinence of attributing a critical role to cellular processes like synaptic tagging and protein kinase A activation to explain the memory storage processes at the cellular level was also discussed.

Amygdala↗

PubMed1999

Memory complaints in young and elderly subjects.

OBJECTIVE: To compare the quantitative and qualitative aspects of memory complaints in cognitively normal subjects aged under and above 50 years. SETTING: A memory clinic located in a general hospital in a suburb of Paris offering direct access to subjects. DESIGN: Retrospective review of the files of consecutive patients who attended the clinic during one year. PARTICIPANTS: Subjects were included if (a) they presented with memory complaints, (b) they had normal general cognitive functioning according to age and educational level, (c) they were devoid of present or past history of neurologic or psychiatric disorders. METHODS: Subjects rated the severity of memory complaints as major or minor and filled in a 8-item questionnaire assessing various memory difficulties in everyday life. Relationship between severity of memory complaints and demographic data, memory performance and affective status was compared in 183 non-depressed, non-cognitively impaired healthy adults aged 50 years and over, and in 77 younger adults. RESULTS: Semiologic aspects and correlates of memory complaints were similar in younger and older adults. No close relationship was found between severity of memory complaints and memory performance. In both age groups, memory complaints were strongly related to affective status, mainly to the severity of anxious symptomatology. Memory complaints were related to gender in younger subjects, and to subjective assessment of well-being in older. CONCLUSION: Memory complaints of elderly do not appear basically different from memory complaints of younger subjects. They constitute a complex psychological symptom unlikely to be explained by a few variables and cannot be reduced to the subjective counterpart of memory performance decline associated with age.

Adult↗

PubMed1999

Differential modulation of a common memory retrieval network revealed by positron emission tomography.

Functional neuroimaging is uniquely placed to examine the dynamic nature of normal human memory, the distributed brain networks that support it, and how they are modulated. Memory has traditionally been classified into context-specific memories personally experienced ("episodic memory") and impersonal non-context-specific memories ("semantic memory"). However, we suggest that another useful distinction is whether events are personally relevant or not. Typically the factors of personal relevance and temporal context are confounded, and it is as yet not clear the precise influence of either on how memories are stored or retrieved. Here we focus on the retrieval of real-world memories unconfounding personal relevance and temporal context during positron emission tomography (PET) scanning. Memories differed along two dimensions: They were personally relevant (or not) and had temporal specificity (or not). Recollection of each of the resultant four memory subtypes-autobiographical events, public events, autobiographical facts, and general knowledge-was associated with activation of a common network of brain regions. Within this system, however, enhanced activity was observed for retrieval of personally relevant, time-specific memories in left hippocampus, medial prefrontal cortex, and left temporal pole. Bilateral temporoparietal junctions were activated preferentially for personal memories, regardless of time specificity. Finally, left parahippocampal gyrus, left anterolateral temporal cortex, and posterior cingulate cortex were involved in memory retrieval irrespective of person or time. Our findings suggest that specializations in memory retrieval result from associations between subsets of regions within a common network. We believe that these findings throw new light on an old debate surrounding episodic and declarative theories of memory and the precise involvement of the hippocampus.

Adult↗

PubMed1991

Equivalent impairment of spatial and nonspatial memory following damage to the human hippocampus.

The hippocampus has sometimes been proposed to function as a cognitive map, a memory system that stores information about allocentric space. Work with experimental animals and memory-impaired patients has raised difficulties with this view by showing that the hippocampus is not performing an exclusively spatial function. However, the possibility has remained that the hippocampus plays a special role in spatial memory or a disproportionately large role in spatial memory compared to other kinds of memory. This study compared spatial and nonspatial memory in amnesic patients with lesions of the hippocampal formation or diencephalon. Subjects studied an array of 16 toy objects and were subsequently tested for object recall, object recognition, and memory for the location of the objects. Control subjects were tested after long retention intervals in order to equate their object memory performance with that of the patients. The main finding was that, when the performance of amnesic patients on the object memory tests was matched to the object memory performance of control subjects, spatial memory performance of the amnesic patients also matched the spatial memory performance of the control subjects. The results were the same for the two groups of patients. These findings suggest that the hippocampus is not especially involved in spatial memory. Spatial memory is simply one instance of a broader category of memory that requires the hippocampus. While cognitive mapping in its most abstract sense may describe hippocampal function, our results support alternative formulation, suggesting that the hippocampus is necessary for the rapid acquisition of relational, configural, or declarative (as opposed to purely spatial) information.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Neutral and emotional episodic memory: global impairment after lorazepam or scopolamine.

RATIONALE: Benzodiazepines and anticholinergic drugs have repeatedly been shown to impair episodic memory for emotionally neutral material in humans. However, their effect on memory for emotionally laden stimuli has been relatively neglected. OBJECTIVE: We sought to investigate the effects of the benzodiazepine, lorazepam, and the anticholinergic, scopolamine, on incidental episodic memory for neutral and emotional components of a narrative memory task in humans. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A double-blind, placebo-controlled independent group design was used with 48 healthy volunteers to examine the effects of these drugs on emotional and neutral episodic memory. RESULTS: As expected, the emotional memory advantage was retained for recall and recognition memory under placebo conditions. However, lorazepam and scopolamine produced anterograde recognition memory impairments on both the neutral and emotional components of the narrative, although floor effects were obtained for recall memory. Furthermore, compared with placebo, recognition memory for both central (gist) and peripheral (detail) aspects of neutral and emotional elements of the narrative was poorer after either drug. CONCLUSIONS: Benzodiazepine-induced GABAergic enhancement or scopolamine-induced cholinergic hypofunction results in a loss of the enhancing effect of emotional arousal on memory. Furthermore, lorazepam- and scopolamine-induced memory impairment for both gist (which is amygdala dependent) and detail raises the possibility that their effects on emotional memory do not depend only on the amygdala. We discuss the results with reference to potential clinical/forensic implications of processing emotional memories under conditions of globally impaired episodic memory.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

Phenomenological validity of an OCD-memory model and the remember/know distinction.

In earlier experiments using interactive computer animation with healthy subjects, it was found that displaying compulsive-like repeated checking behavior affects memory. That is, checking does not alter actual memory accuracy, but it does affect 'meta-memory': as checking continues, recollections are experienced as less vivid and less detailed while confidence in memory is undermined. This procedure provides a model of OCD checking and suggests that checking is a counterproductive strategy to reduce memory distrust. The present experiment was carried out to specify the phenomenological quality of memory distrust after checking and to see if repeated checking produces a shift in the memory source that is used to decide about the outcome of checking: from 'remembering' to 'knowing' (Tulving, 1985). Using the same interactive computer-animation, the earlier findings on vividness, detail and confidence were replicated. In addition, it was found that checking made participants endorse quotations from OCD patients (Reed, 1985) expressing a specific ambivalence about memory: 'It is as though the memory is there, but is isn't definite enough', 'I remember doing it in a way, but it's all fuzzy....' And 'I can remember that I've done it. But the memory isn't clear somehow'. This finding adds to the validity of the experimental model. Furthermore, after checking subjects' beliefs about the outcome of checking became based on (general) knowing instead of (specific) remembering. It is suggested that OCD checkers feel a general and relatively strong need to be certain about the veracity of recollections and that they have high standards for memory performance. This may explain earlier findings that OCD checkers have a general tendency to distrust their episodic memory. A need for certainty and a critical attitude towards memory performance may not be problematic or abnormal. It is suggested that clinical problems arise when the patient tries to fight memory distrust by repeated checking. The latter does not reduce distrust but rather increases distrust and the patient may get trapped in a spiral of mutually reinforcing checking behavior and memory distrust.

Adult↗

PubMed1999

Contrasts in memory functions between adolescents with schizophrenia or ADHD.

Previous research on memory and schizophrenia has relied on a limited number of global memory measures instead of a comprehensive assessment of various memory components. In addition, little effort has been directed at examining memory functioning in patients with early-onset schizophrenia. Published research often lacks a relevant neuropsychiatric comparison group to control for attention difficulties. Patients with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) were included in the present study for this purpose. To our knowledge, a direct comparison of the two patient groups on memory functions has never been made. In the present study, both adolescents with schizophrenia and adolescents with ADHD were compared on a comprehensive memory test battery. Nineteen adolescents with schizophrenia were compared to 20 ADHD adolescents and 30 normally functioning adolescents on measures of working memory and long-term episodic memory, including tests of verbal and visual memory, free recall and recognition memory. The performance of the adolescents with schizophrenia was impaired as compared to the normal group on most of the memory measures. They performed significantly more poorly than the adolescents with ADHD on the visual memory tests. The ADHD group scored more impaired than the schizophrenia group on working memory tests with focus on distractibility. The findings suggest a general memory deficit among adolescents with schizophrenia related to both verbal and visual material. Impairment on the measures of visual memory is specific to schizophrenia and does not characterise the ADHD subjects.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2001

Generalized dissociative amnesia: episodic, semantic and procedural memories lost and found.

OBJECTIVE: This review tests Ribot's classic twofold categorization of generalized amnesia (GA) into Type I, total loss of episodic memory, and Type II, additional more or less extensive loss of semantic and/or procedural memory. It also explores his law of regression, according to which, cast in modern terms, recovery of lost procedural and semantic memories precedes recovery of episodic memory, as well as reported aetiological factors. METHOD: Clinically and formally assessed cases of GA, published since 1845, were surveyed and further analysed. RESULTS: Over and above authentic episodic memory loss, cases differed widely in the extent of impairment of semantic and procedural memory. Recovery of semantic and procedural memory often preceded recovery of episodic memory. This particularly applied to authenticated trauma memories. To an extent, lost memories affected current functioning, and in some cases were associated with alternating dissociative personalities. Severe memory distortions upon memory recovery were not reported. Most cases were trauma or stress related, while in some cases the aetiology remained unknown. CONCLUSIONS: Contrary to the view expressed in DSM-IV, which states that dissociative amnesia pertains to an inability to recall personal information, GA may also involve loss and recovery of semantic and procedural memories. Since the loss of various memory types in GA is dimensional rather than categorical, Ribot's typological distinction does not hold. Some of the reviewed cases suggest a trauma-related aetiology. Generalized amnesia of varying degrees of severity can involve delayed retrieval of trauma memories, as well as the loss and delayed retrieval of the premorbid personality.

Amnesia↗

PubMed2002

Memory function during propofol and alfentanil anesthesia: predictive value of individual differences.

BACKGROUND: Conscious recall and implicit memory have been shown to depend on hypnotic state as measured by electroencephalographic (EEG) bispectral index (BIS). A third expression of memory (unconscious-controlled memory) was recently observed after moderate to light sedation (BIS, 70-80). The present study investigated memory function during deep sedation (BIS, 60-70). As memory effects are small, the authors studied potential predictors of individual differences in memory performance. METHODS: Memory function and speed of information processing were assessed in 56 outpatients before surgery. During propofol anesthesia supplemented with alfentanil, patients heard a series of words while anesthesia was titrated to BIS, 60-70. In between words, response to command was assessed using the Isolated Forearm Technique. The authors tested memory with a word stem completion task and process dissociation procedure to distinguish explicit from implicit effects. RESULTS: Mean (+/- SD) BIS during word presentation was 64.0 +/- 3. Patients with conscious recall of verbal commands (n = 9) did not recall or recognize presented words. Even so, the process dissociation procedure revealed evidence of memory by a significantly higher hit rate in the inclusion condition (0.26) than in the exclusion condition (0.12). Patients without conscious recall showed no evidence of memory for presented words. Hit scores correlated significantly with scores in the preoperative memory test (r = 0.35). CONCLUSIONS: The authors found evidence of weak explicit memory function during anesthesia titrated to BIS, 60-70. The observations strongly suggest that postoperative memory relates to awareness during anesthesia, but the nature of this relation remains unclear. Memory seems more likely in patients with good preoperative memory performance.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Memory strengthening by a real-life episode during reconsolidation: an outcome of water deprivation via brain angiotensin II.

A considerable body of evidence reveals that consolidated memories, recalled by a reminder, enter into a new vulnerability phase during which they are susceptible to disruption again. Consistently, reconsolidation was shown by the amnesic effects induced by administration of consolidation blockers after memory labilization. To shed light on the functional value of reconsolidation, we explored whether an endogenous process activated during a concurrent real-life experience improved this memory phase. Reconsolidation of long-term contextual memory has been well documented in the crab Chasmagnathus. Previously we showed that angiotensin II facilitates memory consolidation. Moreover, water deprivation increases brain angiotensin and improves memory consolidation and retrieval through angiotensin II receptors. Here, we tested whether concurrent water deprivation improves reconsolidation via endogenous angiotensin and therefore strengthens memory. We show that memory reconsolidation, induced by training context re-exposure, is facilitated by a concurrent episode of water deprivation, which induces a raise in endogenous brain angiotensin II. Positive modulation is expressed by full memory retention, despite a weak training, 24 or 72 but not 4 h after memory reactivation. This is the first evidence that memory can be positively modulated during reconsolidation through an identified endogenous process triggered during a real-life episode. We propose that the functional value for reconsolidation would be to make possible a change in memory strength by the influence of a concurrent experience. Reconsolidation improvement would lead to memory re-evaluation, not by altering memory content but by modifying the behaviour as an outcome of changing the hierarchy of the memories that control it.

Angiotensin II↗

PubMedDate not supplied

[Memory disorders in schizophrenia].

The current interest in memory disorders in schizophrenia results from the way perceptions of schizophrenia--whose organic origin is becoming increasingly evident--and memory--according to which there exist not one, but several memories--have developed. Memory disorders in the schizophrenic cannot be considered in isolation from knowledge accumulated in other areas of the cognitive and neuro-sciences; a more detailed understanding of these disorders requires a comparison of the different cognitive approaches, both with each other and with the neurobiological and clinical approaches, so that they can be integrated. Despite numerous methodological and conceptual difficulties, it now appears to have been established that the schizophrenic's memory deficit should be seen in the context of a wider cognitive deficit, that the memory tasks are not all disturbed and that the memory deficit cannot be identified with one specific form of memory. Thus, iconic formation, short-term memory in the traditionally accepted sense and implicit memory are hardly, if at all, affected; in contrast, the early processing of information, working memory and explicit memory are disturbed, probably to the extent that they require the implementation of strategies to organise the information to be memorized. Finally, in certain tasks, such as those evaluating latent inhibition or negative priming, schizophrenics perform better than normal subjects, suggesting that schizophrenics' cognitive deficit is localised. This profile of memory disorders is compatible with a dysfunction predominating in the frontal and temporo-hippocampal regions. Neuroleptics and anticholinergics have opposite effects on cognitive and mnesic performance, which is improved by the former and aggravated by the latter. The influence of clinical symptoms, positive or negative, institutionalisation of patients and chronic tardive dyskinesia is unclear. Among the theoretical proposals put forward to account for the observed disorders, those relating to a disturbance of the action planning process and to that of the internal representation of context are compatible with the observed memory disorders. All the clinically derived data and those produced by the cognitive and neurosciences indicate a need to reformulate the links between memory, selective attention and evaluation of the relevance of a stimulus, to develop a general model of the reciprocal interactions between cognition and affectivity and to look for the origin of a pathology as complex as schizophrenia, not in a local lesion in an isolated cerebral structure but in a disturbance of the dynamic interactions within a functional, parallel and distributed network of broadly interconnected regions.

Antipsychotic Agents↗

PubMed2001

Testing episodic memory in animals: a new approach.

Episodic memory involves the encoding and storage of memories concerned with unique personal experiences and their subsequent recall, and it has long been the subject of intensive investigation in humans. According to Tulving's classical definition, episodic memory "receives and stores information about temporally dated episodes or events and temporal-spatial relations among these events." Thus, episodic memory provides information about the 'what' and 'when' of events ('temporally dated experiences') and about 'where' they happened ('temporal-spatial relations'). The storage and subsequent recall of this episodic information was thought to be beyond the memory capabilities of nonhuman animals. Although there are many laboratory procedures for investigating memory for discrete past episodes, until recently there were no previous studies that fully satisfied the criteria of Tulving's definition: they can all be explained in much simpler terms than episodic memory. However, current studies of memory for cache sites in food-storing jays provide an ethologically valid model for testing episodic-like memory in animals, thereby bridging the gap between human and animal studies memory. There is now a pressing need to adapt these experimental tests of episodic memory for other animals. Given the potential power of transgenic and knock-out procedures for investigating the genetic and molecular bases of learning and memory in laboratory rodents, not to mention the wealth of knowledge about the neuroanatomy and neurophysiology of the rodent hippocampus (a brain area heavily implicated in episodic memory), an obvious next step is to develop a rodent model of episodic-like memory based on the food-storing bird paradigm. The development of a rodent model system could make an important contribution to our understanding of the neural, molecular, and behavioral mechanisms of mammalian episodic memory.

Animals↗

PubMed2003

Application of the Italian version of the Intensive Care Unit Memory tool in the clinical setting.

INTRODUCTION: The aims of the present study were to assess patients' memories of their stay in the intensive care unit (ICU) over time, using the Italian version of the ICU Memory (ICUM) tool, and to examine the relationship between memory and duration of ICU stay and infection. PATIENTS AND METHOD: Adult patients consecutively admitted to a four-bed ICU of a university hospital, whose stay in the ICU was at least 3 days, were prospectively studied. The ICUM tool was administered twice: face to face 1 week after ICU discharge to 93 patients (successfully in 87); and by phone after 3 months to 67 patients. Stability of memories over time was analyzed using Kappa statistics. RESULTS: Delusional memories appeared to be the most persistent recollections over time (minimum kappa value = 0.68), followed by feelings (kappa value > 0.7 in three out of six memories) and factual memories (kappa value > 0.7 in three out of 11 memories). The patients without a clear memory of their stay in the ICU reported a greater number of delusional memories than did those with a clear memory. Of patients without infection 35% had one or two delusional memories, and 60% of patients with infection had one to four delusional memories (P = 0.029). CONCLUSION: The ICUM tool is of value in a setting and language different from those in which it was created and used. Delusional memories are the most stable recollections, and are frequently associated both with lack of clear memory of ICU experience and with presence of infection during ICU stay.

Adult↗

PubMed1995

Memory styles and related abilities in presentation of self.

The notion of a person's memory style (elaborated in Sehulster, 1988) was investigated as it relates to the presentation of self. A memory style is defined as a combination of a subject's (perceived) ability in verbal memory, auto- biographical memory, and prospective memory, as measured by the Memory Scale (Sehulster, 1981b). In addition to filling out the Memory Scale, 325 subjects completed a 72-item questionnaire that tapped descriptions of abilities and experiences. The range of abilities and experiences was drawn loosely from Gardner's (1985) notion of multiple intelligences. Distinct patterns of self-report were observed for different memory styles. For instance, a love of listening to music was associated with the memory style that is high in both verbal and autobiographical memory but low in prospective memory; a love for numbers and mathematics was associated with the memory style that is high in both verbal and prospective memory but low in autobiographical memory. The results suggest broad individual differences in information processing. Gender differences are discussed in relation to memory styles.

Adult↗

PubMed1991

Memory complaints in older adults. Fact or fiction?

Complaints of poor memory by patients may be an early symptom of a pathologic process like Alzheimer's disease. It is therefore important to determine if patients' complaints of memory impairments are an accurate reflection of real memory disturbance. The relationship between memory complaints (metamemory) and objective memory performance, mood, age, verbal intelligence, and sex was examined in a group of 199 healthy, community dwelling adults (39 to 89 years old). Memory complaints demonstrated a stronger association with depressed mood than with performance on memory tests. Increasing reports of depressive symptoms were associated with more overall memory complaints. Verbal intelligence, age, and sex also contributed to memory complaints. Patients with higher verbal intelligence reported fewer complaints and placed less emphasis on forgetting. Older individuals reported greater frequency of forgetting and greater frequency of using memory techniques. Specific types of memory complaints, seriousness of forgetting, and types of memory aids employed are also described. These results showed that self-rating of memory disturbance by older adults may be related more to depressed mood than to poor performance on memory tests.

Adult↗