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Dissociation of remote and anterograde memory impairment and neural correlates in alcoholic Korsakoff syndrome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2004

ROSEMARY FAMA ,
LAURA MARSH  and
EDITH V. SULLIVAN
ROSEMARY FAMA
Affiliation:
Neuroscience Program, SRI International, Menlo Park, California
LAURA MARSH
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, The John Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland
EDITH V. SULLIVAN
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Neuroscience Program, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California
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Abstract

Alcoholic Korsakoff's syndrome (KS) is marked by remote memory impairment together with characteristic profound anterograde memory deficits. Despite previous studies of memory processes in KS, questions remain regarding the nature and severity of these impairments and identification of brain systems that underlie these different memory impairments. This study examined remote and anterograde memory function in 5 KS patients in comparison with 8 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 24 normal control subjects (NC). In addition, relationships between memory performance and regional brain volumes were examined in the KS group. Overall, the KS group showed severe impairment on both remote and anterograde memory measures, performing at the level of the AD group on most measures. Differences were observed on the pattern of temporal gradient for verbal recognition, with KS exhibiting a more steeply graded rate of decline over the most recent period examined. Severity of the remote memory deficit in KS was not associated with severity of anterograde memory deficit. Examination of brain structure–function relationships in the KS subjects revealed that photo naming of remote historical information was related to posterior cortical white matter volumes but not hippocampal volumes; sequencing was related to prefrontal but not hippocampal volumes. By contrast, a measure of anterograde memory for nonverbal visual material showed a relationship to hippocampal but not regional cortical white matter volumes. This set of dissociations, which parallels that observed in our earlier study of AD, is now documented in KS and provides further evidence that these separate cortical and limbic brain systems are principal neural substrates of the remote and anterograde memory and sequencing deficits in KS. (JINS, 2004, 10, 427–441.)

Keywords

Korsakoff syndromeRemote memoryAnterograde memoryCortical volumeHippocampusAlcoholism
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , May 2004 , pp. 427 - 441
Copyright
© 2004 The International Neuropsychological Society

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