Patterns of False Memory in Patients with Huntington's Disease.
OBJECTIVE
Increased false memory recognition in patients with Huntington's disease (HD) has been widely reported; however, the underlying memory constructive processes remain unclear. The present study explored gist memory, item-specific memory, and monitoring ability in patients with HD.


METHODS
Twenty-five patients (including 13 patients with mild HD and 12 patients with moderate-to-severe HD) and 30 healthy comparison participants (HC) were recruited. We used the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm to investigate participants' false recognition patterns, along with neuropsychological tests to assess general cognitive function.


RESULTS
Both mild and moderate-to-severe patients with HD showed significant executive functioning and episodic memory impairment. On the DRM tasks, both HD patient groups showed significantly impaired performance in tasks assessing unrelated false recognition and item-specific memory as compared to the HC group; moderate-to-severe patients performed more poorly than mild patients did. Only moderate-severe patients exhibited significantly poorer related false recognition index scores than HCs in the verbal DRM task; performance of HD patient groups was comparable to the HC group on the pictorial DRM task.


CONCLUSIONS
It appears that diminished verbatim memory and monitoring ability are early signs of cognitive decline during the HD course. Conversely, gist memory is relatively robust, with only partial decline during advanced-stage HD. Our findings suggest that medial temporal lobe function is relatively preserved compared to that of frontal-related structures in early HD. Thus, gist-based memory rehabilitation programs might be beneficial for patients with HD.
Department of Neurology, Wan Fang Hospital, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan.
I-Wen
IW
Chen
Department of Neurology, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Linkou Medical Center and College of Medicine, Chang-Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan.
Chiung-Mei
CM
Chen
Department of Neurology, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Linkou Medical Center and College of Medicine, Chang-Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan.
Yih-Ru
YR
Wu
Department of Psychology, Asia University, Taichung, Taiwan.|Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.|Department of Neurology, National Taiwan University Hospital, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.|Department of Neurobiology and Cognitive Science Center, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Mau-Sun
MS
Hua
D000328:Adult; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006816:Huntington Disease / Q000150:complications*; D008297:Male; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012094:Repression, Psychology; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric
Assessment; Executive functions; Huntington's disease; Learning and memory; Rehabilitation