Recollection and familiarity in amnesic mild cognitive impairment.
OBJECTIVE
To investigate whether, in patients with amnesic mild cognitive impairment (a-MCI), recognition deficits are mainly due to a selective impairment of recollection rather than familiarity.


METHODS
Nineteen patients with a-MCI and 23 sex-, age-, and education-matched healthy controls underwent two experimental investigations, using the Process Dissociation Procedure (PDP) and the Remember/Know (R/K) procedure, to assess the differential contribution of recollection and familiarity to their recognition performance.


RESULTS
Both experimental procedures revealed a selective preservation of familiarity in a-MCI patients. Moreover, the R/K procedure showed a statistically significant impairment of recollection in a-MCI patients for words that were either read or anagrammed during the study phase.


CONCLUSIONS
A-MCI is known to be commonly associated with a high risk of conversion to Alzheimer's disease (AD). Several previous studies have demonstrated a characteristic impairment of episodic memory in a-MCI, with an early dysfunction of recognition. Our findings are consistent with the knowledge of neurodegeneration occurring in AD, which is characterized, at the earliest disease stages, by a selective involvement of the entorhinal cortex. Moreover, the current study supports the dual process model of recognition, which hypothesizes recollection and familiarity to be independent processes associated with distinct anatomical substrates.
Serra
Laura
L
Neuroimaging Laboratory, Foundation IRCCS Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy.
Bozzali
Marco
M
Cercignani
Mara
M
Perri
Roberta
R
Fadda
Lucia
L
Caltagirone
Carlo
C
Carlesimo
Giovanni A
GA
D000368:Aged; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D000647:Amnesia / Q000523:psychology*; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D018450:Disease Progression; D004493:Education; D018728:Entorhinal Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*