title: Episodic memory decline in Huntington's disease, a binding deficit?
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Huntington's disease (HD) is characterized by episodic memory deterioration.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  Our paper investigates the cognitive mechanisms that might underlie this decline. To this aim, we tested two executive hypotheses, the binding and the inhibition hypotheses.
  
  
  METHODS
  Fifteen HD patients (Mean Cytosine-Adenine-Guanine repeats = 44.93, SD = 2.82), and eighteen controls matched for age, gender and education were assessed with a neuropsychological battery tapping episodic memory and several executive functions, including binding and inhibition.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Episodic decline in patients with HD was only related to binding performance.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our study shows that HD patients suffer from a perturbation of the associative or integrative mechanisms responsible for the combination of different memory features into complex episodic representations. Damage to frontal-hippocampal circuitry in HD is likely to be responsible for this impairment.
authors: LUNAM Université, Laboratoire de Psychologie des Pays de la Loire, Université de Nantes et Angers, France Neuropsychology and Auditory Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Lille, France Laboratoire Epsylon, EA 4556, Université Paul-Valery, Montpellier III, France.
authors: Mohamad
authors: M
authors: El Haj
authors: LUNAM Université, Laboratoire de Psychologie des Pays de la Loire, Université de Nantes et Angers, France Neuropsychology and Auditory Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Lille, France.
authors: Marie
authors: M
authors: Caillaud
authors: Radboud University Nijmegen, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Rehabilitation Medical Centre Groot Klimmendaal, SIZA Support and Rehabilitation, Arnhem, The Netherlands.
authors: Luciano
authors: L
authors: Fasotti
authors: Centre Mémoire de Ressources et de Recherches, CHU Angers, France.
authors: Christophe
authors: C
authors: Verny
authors: LUNAM Université, Laboratoire de Psychologie des Pays de la Loire, Université de Nantes et Angers, France Centre Mémoire de Ressources et de Recherches, CHU Angers, France.
authors: Philippe
authors: P
authors: Allain
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D056344:Executive Function / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006816:Huntington Disease / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D061212:Memory, Episodic; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests
keywords: Binding; Huntington's disease; episodic memory; executive function