Self-defining Memories and their Contribution to the Sense of Self in Alzheimer's Disease.

AIMS: Unlike autobiographical memory (i.e., memory for personal information) in Alzheimer's Disease (AD), little is known about Self-Defining Memories (SDM) (i.e., memories of highly significant personal events) in AD. METHODS: The characteristics of self-defining memories in AD were evaluated by analyzing their specificity, emotional valence, and integration, as well as their centrality and contribution to self-continuity. Results demonstrated fewer specific SDM in AD participants than in controls. RESULTS: No significant differences were observed between AD participants and controls regarding the production of positive or integrated SDM. Furthermore, no significant differences were observed between AD participants and controls regarding the rating of the centrality of SDM and their contribution to self-continuity. These results demonstrate that, although AD participants produce fewer specific SDM than controls, both populations have similar levels of emotional valence, integration, centrality, and selfcontinuity of these memories. CONCLUSION: It is concluded that patients with AD, at least those in the mild stages of the disease, can build on significant personal events and experiences (i.e., SDM) to reflect on how these events have changed the way they see themselves.

The Swinging Self: The Costs of Shifting Between Self-Images in Alzheimer's Disease.

BACKGROUND: We investigated the ability of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) to shift between different self-images. METHODS: We developed an original task (shifting-self task) in which we invited 28 patients with AD and 30 control participants to generate "who am I" statements that describe 2 alternative self-images (ie, physical-self vs psychological-self). In a control task, participants had to generate 2 blocks of "who am I" statements (ie, physical-self block and psychological-self block). RESULTS: Analyses showed longer completion time in both the shifting-self and control task in patients with AD than in control participants. Completion time on the shifting-self task was longer than that on the control task in patients with AD, suggesting a shifting cost in AD. CONCLUSION: We propose that one feature of the diminished sense of self in AD is the difficulty of patients to shift between different alternating self-images.

Chunking to improve verbal forward spans in Korsakoff's syndrome.

Chunking is a mnemonic strategy that involves organizing information into appropriate units. Our article examined the use of this strategy on forward and backward span performance in Korsakoff's syndrome. Fifteen patients with Korsakoff's syndrome and 17 age-and-education matched healthy controls participated to the study. Digit span performance (both forward and backward) was tested before and after chunking training. Results demonstrated an increased performance on the forward spans after chunking training in the patients with Korsakoff's syndrome, but no beneficial effect was observed on the backward spans in these participants. Controls demonstrated a chunking effect on both forward and backward span performance. Our findings suggest that a simple training in chunking may be useful as part of a cognitive strategy training for improving working memory performance in patients with Korsakoff's syndrome.

Tell about yourself to improve your autobiographical memory: A study of Korsakoff's syndrome.

Korsakoff's syndrome (KS) has been associated with a difficulty to retrieve specific autobiographical memories. We investigated whether this difficulty can be alleviated after the retrieval of statements describing self-images. KS patients and control participants were recruited and asked to retrieve autobiographical memories after providing statements to the question "Who am I?" and after a control condition consisting of verbal fluency. Analysis showed higher autobiographical specificity in the "Who am I?" than in verbal fluency condition in both patients with KS and control participants. At a theoretical level, our findings demonstrate how retrieval of information related to conceptual self may influence autobiographical memory in KS. At a clinical level, our procedures are important as they demonstrate how a simple task (i.e., "Who am I?" statements) may serve as a tool to cue specific autobiographical memories in patients with KS.

Destination memory and deception: when I lie to Barack Obama about the moon.

This study investigates whether deceivers demonstrate high memory of the person to whom lies have been told (i.e., high destination memory). Participants were asked to tell true information (e.g., the heart is a vital organ) and false information (e.g., the moon is bigger than the sun) to pictures of famous people (e.g., Barack Obama) and, in a subsequent recognition test, they had to remember to whom each type of information had previously been told. Participants were also assessed on a deception scale to divide them into two populations (i.e., those with high vs. those with low deception). Participants with high tendency to deceive demonstrated similar destination memory for both false and true information, whereas those with low deception demonstrated higher destination memory for lies than for true information. Individuals with a high tendency to deceive seem to keep track of the destination of both true information and lies to be consistent in their future social interactions, and thus to avoid discovery of their deception. However, the inconsistency between deceiving and the moral standard of individuals with a low tendency to deceive may result in high destination memory in these individuals.

Directed forgetting of autobiographical memory in mild Alzheimer's disease.

Using the autobiographical directed forgetting method (Barnier et al., 2007), the present paper addressed the intentional inhibitory processes of episodic and semantic autobiographical memory in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Mild AD patients and healthy elderly people were instructed to either forget or to continue remembering previously generated autobiographical events. In a later recall test they were asked to reconstruct the early-generated memories regardless of the forget/remember instruction. Autobiographical reconstruction was further distributed into episodic and semantic memories. Results showed no forget instruction effect on episodic or semantic autobiographical recall with AD patients, whereas healthy elderly people were able to inhibit only episodic autobiographical memories. The findings suggest an impairment of the intentional inhibitory processes in autobiographical memory with AD and a relative preservation of these mechanisms with normal ageing. They also demonstrate an earlier decline in the intentional inhibitory processes compared to the autobiographical deterioration in AD.