ABSTRACT
The authors investigated retrospective timing in participants with Korsakoff's syndrome. Patients were assessed on four retrospective tasks on which they were instructed to read three-digit numbers aloud (15 seconds), fill connected squares (30 seconds), decide whether words were abstract or concrete (45 seconds), or read aloud a text about mushroom picking (60 seconds). Participants were not aware of the task's timing until the end of the tasks, when they were asked to estimate the elapsed time. Results revealed an underestimation of the elapsed time in Korsakoff participants, suggesting that time is perceived to pass quickly for these participants.
Subject(s)
Korsakoff Syndrome/psychology , Time Perception , Executive Function , Female , Humans , Male , Memory, Episodic , Middle Aged , Neuropsychological Tests , Regression AnalysisABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Context memory, or the ability to remember the context in which an episodic event has occurred (e.g., where and when an event took place), has been found to be compromised in Korsakoff's syndrome. This study examined whether a similar deficit would be observed for destination memory, that is, the ability to remember to whom an information was previously transmitted. METHODS: Patients with Korsakoff's syndrome and healthy controls were instructed to tell proverbs to pictures of celebrities. In a subsequent recognition test, they had to indicate to which celebrity they had previously told the proverbs. Participants also completed a neuropsychological battery including a binding task in which they were required to associate letters with their correspondent locations to assess context memory. RESULTS: Results showed worse binding and destination memory in patients with Korsakoff's syndrome than in controls. In the Korsakoff group, destination memory was significantly correlated with and predicted by performances on the binding task. CONCLUSIONS: The binding process seems to be impaired in Korsakoff's syndrome, a deficit that may account for the destination memory compromise in the syndrome, and probably, for the difficulty to retrieve the "where and when" of an encountered event.
Subject(s)
Korsakoff Syndrome/psychology , Memory/drug effects , Aged , Case-Control Studies , Female , Humans , Male , Mental Recall/drug effects , Middle Aged , Neuropsychological TestsABSTRACT
The use of high dose baclofen for alcohol-dependence emerged in France from 2008 based on empirical findings, and is still off-label. However, due to the rapid increase in this prescribing practice, the French health authorities have decided to frame it using an extraordinary regulatory measure named "temporary recommendation for use" (TRU). Baclofen prescribers from CAMTEA, a regional team-based off-label system for supervising baclofen prescribing, which was developed much prior to the TRU, discuss herein the pros and cons of this measure and the applicability of its different aspects in the daily clinical practice.
