Conscious recollection in autobiographical memory: an investigation in schizophrenia.

Whether or not conscious recollection in autobiographical memory is affected in schizophrenia is unknown. The aim of this study was to address this issue using an experiential approach. An autobiographical memory enquiry was used in combination with the Remember/Know procedure. Twenty-two patients with schizophrenia and 22 normal subjects were asked to recall specific autobiographical memories from four lifetime periods and to indicate the subjective states of awareness associated with the recall of what happened, when and where. They gave Remember, Know or Guess responses according to whether they recalled these aspects of the event on the basis of conscious recollection, simply knowing, or guessing. Results showed that the frequency and consistency of Remember responses was significantly lower in patients than in comparison subjects. In contrast, the frequency of Know responses was not significantly different, whereas the frequency of patients' Guess responses was significantly enhanced. It is concluded that the frequency and consistency of conscious recollection in autobiographical memory is reduced in patients with schizophrenia.

Reduced levels of specific autobiographical memories in schizophrenia.

Autobiographical memory is intrinsically related to the self and personal identity. This study investigated whether both personal episodic memory and semantic memory are impaired in schizophrenia, a disease characterized by an abnormal personal identity. Personal episodic memory and personal semantic memory were investigated in 24 patients with schizophrenia and 24 normal subjects using an autobiographical fluency task and an autobiographical memory inquiry. Autobiographical memory scores and the proportion of specific memories were lower in patients with schizophrenia than in normal subjects. The deficit of personal episodic and semantic memory, as assessed by the autobiographical memory inquiry and the autobiographical fluency task, respectively, was most apparent after the onset of clinical symptoms. Schizophrenia is associated with an impairment of both personal episodic and semantic memory and with a reduction of specific autobiographical memories. Those impairments are consistent with the existence of an abnormal personal identity in patients with schizophrenia.

Effect of benzodiazepines on structural and conceptual/lexical priming.

RATIONALE: Impaired perceptual priming, as assessed by naming reaction times and accuracy, for briefly presented contour-deleted pictures under lorazepam has been documented in several studies but whether the nature of this impairment is visual versus conceptual/lexical is not clear. We used a previously developed paradigm to examine whether lorazepam affects visual processes involved in the coding of contour information or conceptual/lexical representations. METHOD: Three groups were tested (lorazepam, diazepam and placebo). In the study phase, participants named line drawings, presented for 500 ms, in which 50% of the contour was deleted by removing every other line and vertex from each part. In the test phase, participants saw the identical picture, its complement (the other 50% of the contour), or a samename/different-shape picture, each presented for 200 ms. RESULTS: For all three groups, the magnitude of priming, as assessed by naming RTs and error rates, was equivalent in the identical and in the complementary conditions and the amount of facilitation was reduced in the same-name condition. Perceptual priming occurred both in the lorazepam and in the diazepam groups, though reduced, compared to placebo, for RTs. No conceptual priming (i.e. facilitated performance in the same-name condition) was observed in the benzodiazepine groups. CONCLUSION: Equivalent priming for identical and complementary pictures in the three groups suggests that benzodiazepines do not affect the activation of the geon structural description. The lack of priming for same-name pictures suggests that benzodiazepines affect access, retrieval or selection of conceptual/lexical information.