PRESERVED FAMILIARITY-BASED RECOGNITION MEMORY IN A CASE OF GLOBAL AMNESIA Christine BASTIN 1, Martial VAN DER LINDEN 1,2, Annik CHARNALLET 3, & Stéphane ADAM 1 1 Neuropsychology Unit, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium, 2 Cognitive Psychopathology Unit, University of Geneva, Switzerland, 3 Neurology Unit, CHU, Grenoble, France Introduction Some studies have described amnesic patients with lesions limited to the « extended hippocampal system » (1) that presented preserved recognition together with severely impaired recall (1,2,3). It has been suggested that, in these patients, familiarity-based recognition may be intact, while recollection is affected (1). The present study explores the recognition memory performance of a severely amnesic patient (ER) showing preserved item recognition and impaired recall. Methods Patient ER Tasks Non verbal subtests from the Doors and People Test Battery (Baddeley et al., 1994)* * Baddeley, A. D., Emslie, H., & Nimmo-Smith, I. (1994). Doors and People : A test of visual and verbal recall and recognition. Bury St. Edmunds, England: Thames Valley Test Co. -Shapes subtests: recall of 4 drawings -Doors test: 4-alternative forced-choice recognition of pictures of 12 doors (set A: foils relatively different from the targets; set B: foils very similar to the targets) -Tasks matched on difficulty Results Yes-no and forced-choice recognition memory  Yes-no task: 18 faces, presented for 1.5 sec.; test = 18 old + 18 new, yes-no recognition  Forced-choice task: 18 faces, presented for 1.5 sec.; test = 18 old-new pairs, forced-choice recognition References (1) Aggleton, J. P. & Shaw (1996) Amnesia and recognition memory: A reanalysis of psychometric data. Neuropsychologia,34, (2) Mayes, A. R., Isaac, C. L., Holdstock, J. S., Hunkin, N. M., Montaldi, D., Downes, J. J., MacDonald, C., Cezayirli, E., & Roberts, J. N. (2001). Memoy for single items, word pairs, and temporal order of different kinds in a patient with selective hippocampal lesions. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 18, (3) Vargha-Khadem, F., Gadian, D. G., Watkins, K. E., Connelly, A., Van Paesschen, W., & Mishkin, M. (1997). Differential effects of early hippocampal pathology on episodic and semantic memory. Science, 277, (4) Bastin, C., & Van der Linden, M. (submitted). The contribution of recollection and familiarity to recognition memory: A study of the effects of test format and aging. This work was supported by a grant from the French Community of Belgium : Actions de Recherche Concertées - convention 99/ Conclusions ER’s results provide some additional evidence that item recognition memory can be relatively preserved in amnesia. Recollection seems more affected than familiarity. A preserved familiarity may support ER’s item recognition year-old right-handed man - used to be a chief architect : Carbon monoxid poisoning - Memory disorders since then - MR scan: bilateral lesions to the pallidum; hippocampal lesions suspected, but to-be-confirmed WAIS-RQI V : 116 QI P : 123 QI T : 122 WMS-RVerbal memory index : 74 Visual memory index : 101 General memory index : 83 Digit span5 ER’s performance were compared with that of 18 men matched on age and education ER’s impairment in Shapes recall was more severe than his impairment in Doors recognition ER’s recognition performance was normal when the foils were relatively different from the targets A previous study using these tasks showed that the participants based their recognition decisions more frequently on familiarity in the forced-choice task than in the yes-no task (4). ER showed a normal recognition memory, despite his severe amnesia ER’s performance was slightly better in the forced- choice task than in the yes-no task (false alarms) Familiarity-based recognition may be preserved? Process Dissociation Procedure (task adapted from Jennings & Jacoby, 1997)° ° Jennings, J. M. & Jacoby, L. L. (1997). An opposition procedure for detecting age-related deficits in recollection : Telling effects of repetition. Psychology and Aging, 12, Two tasks : one task with words as material, the other with unfamiliar faces as material In each :Study phase: 40 items, presented for 3 sec. Test phase: yes-no recognition; 40 targets + 40 distractors presented twice (after 0, 3 or 12 items) - Inclusion : say « yes » to items that have been seen at least once (targets + second presentation of the distractors) - Exclusion : say « yes » only to studied items Results WordsFaces ER’s performance were compared with that of 4 men matched on age and education ER’s performance were compared with that of 2 men matched on age and education Intact automatic process (familiarity); slight decrease of controlled process (recollection), that needs to be confirmed with more control data. Results