The episodic memory monitoring in patients with white matter lesions / 中华神经科杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the episodic memory monitoring in patients with white matter lesions (WML) and explore the relevance of episodic memory disorder and memory monitoring and the possible mechanism.Methods The feeling of knowing-episodic memory (FOK-EM) paradigm was adopted and subsequently administered in 30 WML patients and 30 control participants who were matched in age and educational level.Results Compared with control group (cued recall 4.37 ± 1.59;recognition 8.73 ± 1.05),the episodic memories of WML patients were significantly impaired on the cued recall performance (3.30 ± 1.51,t =2.666,P ＜ 0.05) and recognition performance (7.23 ± 0.77,t =6.306,P ＜ 0.01).Furthermore,the accuracy of FOK judgment (-0.13 ± 0.31),the correct judgment and correct recognition of FOK-EM (23.16％ ±5.96％) and the correct judgment and false recognition of FOK-EM (34.26％ ± 7.65％) in the WML patients group were significantly different compared with the control group (the accuracy of FOK judgment0.34 ± 0.27,t =6.280,P ＜ 0.01;the correct judgment and correct recognition35.12％ ± 6.82％,t =7.234,P ＜ 0.01;the correct judgment and false recognition19.27％ ±6.50％,t =-8.174,P ＜ 0.01).In addition,the correct judgment and false recognition performance were positively correlated with the severity of periventricular lesions and deep white matter lesions in the WMLpatients group (r=0.716,P＜0.01;r=0.598,P＜0.01).Conclusions The WML patients demonstrated an overestimation of their recognition ability of episodic memory.Moreover,this impairment of memory monitoring was correlated with the deficit of executive function caused by the damage of the prefrontal-subcortical circuit,indicating that this mechanism could be an influential factor of episodic memory disorder in WML.