Impaired recollection and initially preserved familiarity in a patient with bilateral fornix transection following third ventricle colloid cyst removal: A two-year follow-up study.

OBJECTIVE: Recognition memory is widely accepted as a dual process-based model, namely familiarity and recollection. However, the location of their specific neurobiological substrates remains unclear. Similar to hippocampal damage, fornix damage has been associated with recollection memory but not familiarity memory deficits. To understand the neural basis of recognition memory, determining the importance of the fornix and its hippocampal connections is essential. METHODS: Recognition memory was examined in a 45-year-old male who underwent a complete bilateral fornix section following the removal of a third ventricle colloid cyst. The application of familiarity and recollection for recognition memory decisions was investigated via an immediate and delayed associative recognition test and an immediate and delayed forced-choice task in the patient and a control group (N = 15) over a two-year follow-up period. Complete demographic, neuropsychological, neuropsychiatric, and neuroradiological characterizations of this patient were performed. RESULTS: Persistent immediate and delayed verbal recollection memory deficits were observed in the patient. Moreover, delayed familiarity-based recognition memory declined gradually over the follow-up period, immediate familiarity-based recognition memory was unaffected, and reduced non-verbal memory improved. CONCLUSION: The present findings support models that the extended hippocampal system, including the fornices, does not appear to play a role in familiarity memory but is particularly important for recollection memory. Moreover, our study suggests that bilateral fornix transection may be associated with relatively functional recovery of non-verbal memory.

Phonological false recognition, recollection, and familiarity in healthy aging and alzheimer's disease / Falso reconocimiento fonológico, recolección y familiaridad en el envejecimiento y la enfermedad de Alzheimer

BACKGROUND: Thirty healthy older people, 20 Alzheimer's disease patients (matched on age and education level) and 33 young people, participated in an experiment to implicitly induce phonological false memories, allowing us to obtain estimates of their recollection, familiarity, and false recognition. METHOD: In the study task, words were selected which used half of the letters in the alphabet. In the recognition test, there were three types of non-studied new words: critical lures using letters from the same half of the alphabet as the study task words; distractors formed using the unused half of the alphabet, and distractors formed using all the letters in the alphabet. RESULTS: Results showed that: (a) in all the samples, critical lures produced more false recognitions than distractors composed of all the letters in the alphabet or distractors composed of the letters not used in the study, showing a significant phonological false recognition effect; (b) both recollection and familiarity declined with age and dementia; (c) phonological false recognition increased with age and Alzheimer's disease. CONCLUSIONS: These results seem to support the idea that estimates of recollection, familiarity, and phonological false recognition can be used as early markers of cognitive impairment

ANTECEDENTES: treinta personas mayores sanas, 20 pacientes con enfermedad de Alzheimer (igualados en edad y nivel educativo) y 33 jóvenes participaron en un experimento para inducirles implícitamente falsas memorias fonológicas, permiténdonos obtener sus estimaciones de recolección, familiaridad y falso reconocimiento. MÉTODO: en la tarea de estudio las palabras estaban formadas por una mitad de las letras del alfabeto. En el test de reconocimiento había tres tipos de palabras nuevas no estudiadas: palabras críticas formadas por las mismas letras de la tarea de estudio, distractores formados por la otra mitad de letras no utilizadas en la tarea de estudio y distractores formados por todas las letras del alfabeto. RESULTADOS: los resultados mostraron que: (a) en las tres muestras las palabras críticas producían más falsos reconocimientos que en ambos tipos de distractores, mostrando un claro efecto significativo de falso reconocimiento fonológico; (b) tanto la recolección como la familiaridad disminuían durante el envejecimiento y la enfermedad de Alzheimer; (c) el falso reconocimiento fonológico aumentaba durante el envejecimiento y la enfermedad de Alzheimer. CONCLUSIONES: nuestros resultados apoyan la idea de que las estimaciones de recolección, familiaridad y falso reconocimiento fonológico pueden ser utililizadas como marcadores tempranos de deterioro cognitivo

Phonological false recognition, recollection, and familiarity in healthy aging and Alzheimer's disease.

BACKGROUND: Thirty healthy older people, 20 Alzheimer's disease patients (matched on age and education level) and 33 young people, participated in an experiment to implicitly induce phonological false memories, allowing us to obtain estimates of their recollection, familiarity, and false recognition. METHOD: In the study task, words were selected which used half of the letters in the alphabet. In the recognition test, there were three types of non-studied new words: critical lures using letters from the same half of the alphabet as the study task words; distractors formed using the unused half of the alphabet, and distractors formed using all the letters in the alphabet. RESULTS: Results showed that: (a) in all the samples, critical lures produced more false recognitions than distractors composed of all the letters in the alphabet or distractors composed of the letters not used in the study, showing a significant phonological false recognition effect; (b) both recollection and familiarity declined with age and dementia; (c) phonological false recognition increased with age and Alzheimer's disease. CONCLUSIONS: These results seem to support the idea that estimates of recollection, familiarity, and phonological false recognition can be used as early markers of cognitive impairment.

Phonological false recognition produced by bottom-up automatic activation in young and older people.

Two experiments explored a new procedure to implicitly induce phonological false memories in young and older people. On the study tasks, half of the words were formed from half of the letters in the alphabet, whereas the remaining words were formed from all the letters in the alphabet. On the recognition tests, there were three types of non-studied new words: critical lures formed from the same half of the letters as the studied words; distractors formed from the other half of the letters not used, and distractors formed from all the letters in the alphabet. In both experiments, the results showed that, in both young and older people, critical lures produced more false recognitions than distractors composed of all the letters in the alphabet, which, in turn, produced more false alarms than distractors composed of the letters not used during the study. These results support the predictions of the activation/monitoring models, which assume that false memories are partly due to activation spreading from items (semantically or phonologically) related to the critical words.

Motivated forgetting reduces veridical memories but slightly increases false memories in both young and healthy older people.

The aim of the current study is to examine the effects of motivated forgetting and aging on true and false memory. Sixty young and 54 healthy older adults were instructed to study two lists of 18 words each. Each list was composed of three sets of six words associated with three non-presented critical words. After studying list 1, half of the participants received the instruction to forget List 1, whereas the other half received the instruction to remember List 1. Next, all the subjects studied list 2; finally, they were asked to remember the words studied in both lists. The results showed that when participants intended to forget the studied List 1, they were less likely to recall the studied words, but more likely to intrude the critical words. That is, we can intentionally forget something but this can also entail the intrusion of some related false memories.

The Role of Recollection and Familiarity in Nondemented Parkinson's Patients.

The aim of the current study was to examine if recollection and familiarity decline in nondemented Parkinson's patients. To do so we compared a sample of older people with Parkinson's disease (n = 32) to a control sample of healthy older people (n = 32) on an associative recognition task in which we manipulated the repetition of the pairs during the study phase (half of the pairs were presented once and half twice) to obtain corrected estimates of recollection, familiarity, and false recognition based on the logic of the process-dissociation procedure. The results clearly show that recollection is impaired but familiarity is preserved in nondemented Parkinson's patients. The results show that memory for pairs in Parkinson's patients relies largely on the familiarity of each item and not on a precise recollection of associative information, supporting the idea that recollection-based monitoring processes are impaired in these patients.

The effects of healthy aging, amnestic mild cognitive impairment, and Alzheimer's disease on recollection, familiarity and false recognition, estimated by an associative process-dissociation recognition procedure.

Given the uneven experimental results in the literature regarding whether or not familiarity declines with healthy aging and cognitive impairment, we compare four samples (healthy young people, healthy older people, older people with amnestic mild cognitive impairment - aMCI -, and older people with Alzheimer's disease - AD -) on an associative recognition task, which, following the logic of the process-dissociation procedure, allowed us to obtain corrected estimates of recollection, familiarity and false recognition. The results show that familiarity does not decline with healthy aging, but it does with cognitive impairment, whereas false recognition increases with healthy aging, but declines significantly with cognitive impairment. These results support the idea that the deficits detected in recollection, familiarity, or false recognition in older people could be used as early prodromal markers of cognitive impairment.

Differences in false recollection according to the cognitive reserve of healthy older people.

We present an associative recognition experiment comparing three samples of healthy people (young people, older people with high cognitive reserve [HCR], and older people with low cognitive reserve [LCR], with each sample consisting of 40 people), manipulating stimuli repetition during the study phase. The results show significant differences among the three samples in their overall performance. However, these differences are not due to a different use of familiarity, but rather due to a different way of using recollection: although there are no differences in the hit rates between the HRC and LRC samples, the LCR group makes significantly more recollective false alarms than the HCR group. Moreover, repetition provokes an increase in the recollective false alarms in the LCR group, but this does not occur in the group of young people or in the HCR group. These findings are explained in terms of recollection-based monitoring errors and seem to provide support for the cognitive reserve hypothesis.

Associative and Implicit Memory Performance as a Function of Cognitive Reserve in Elderly Adults with and without Mild Cognitive Impairment.

This study aims to analyze implicit and explicit memory performance as a function of cognitive reserve (CR) in a healthy control group (N = 39) and a mild cognitive impairment (MCI) group (N = 37). Both groups were subdivided into high and low cognitive reserve, and were asked to complete an explicit and implicit associative recognition tasks. The results showed that the control group was able to learn both tasks (η2 = .19, p < .0001), and the high CR group fared better (η2 = .06, p < .05). The MCI sample, conversely, was unable to learn the implicit relationship, and showed very little learning on the explicit association task. Participants diagnosed with MCI showed little plasticity in learning associations regardless of CR (η2 = .12, p < .01).

Associative and implicit memory performance as a function of cognitive reserve in elderly adults with and without mild cognitive impairment

This study aims to analyze implicit and explicit memory performance as a function of cognitive reserve (CR) in a healthy control group (N = 39) and a mild cognitive impairment (MCI) group (N = 37). Both groups were subdivided into high and low cognitive reserve, and were asked to complete an explicit and implicit associative recognition tasks. The results showed that the control group was able to learn both tasks (η2 = .19, p < .0001), and the high CR group fared better (η2 = .06, p < .05). The MCI sample, conversely, was unable to learn the implicit relationship, and showed very Little learning on the explicit association task. Participants diagnosed with MCI showed little plasticity in learning associations regardless of CR (η2 = .12, p < .01) (AU)

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False memories in Lewy-body disease.

Recently, de Boysson, Belleville, Phillips et al. (2011) found that patients with Lewy-body disease (LBD) showed significantly lower rates of false memories than healthy controls, using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) experimental procedure. Given that this result could be explained by the practically null rate of true recognition in the LBD group (0.09), we decided to replicate the study by de Boysson et al. (2011), but including a new condition that would maximize the true recognition rate (and analyze its effect on the rate of false memories). Specifically, in a DRM experiment, we manipulated (within subjects) two study and recognition conditions: in the "immediate" condition, both the LBD patients and the control group of healthy older people received a different recognition test after each study list (containing twelve words associated with a non-presented critical word), while in the "delayed" condition (similar to the one in de Boysson et al., 2011), the participants received the entire series of study lists and then took only one recognition test. The results showed that, in both samples, the "immediate" condition produced higher corrected rates of both true and false recognition than the "delayed" condition, although they were both lower in the LBD patients, which shows that these patients are capable of encoding and recognizing the general similitude underlying information (gist memory) in the right conditions.

Repetition increases false recollection in older people.

Aging is accompanied by an increase in false alarms on recognition tasks, and these false alarms increase with repetition in older people (but not in young people). Traditionally, this increase was thought to be due to a greater use of familiarity in older people, but it was recently pointed out that false alarms also have a clear recollection component in these people. The main objective of our study is to analyze whether the expected increase in the rate of false alarms in older people due to stimulus repetition is produced by an inadequate use of familiarity, recollection, or both processes. To do so, we carried out an associative recognition experiment using pairs of words and pairs of images (faces associated with everyday contexts), in which we analyzed whether the repetition of some of the pairs increases the rate of false alarms in older people (compared to what was found in a sample of young people), and whether this increase is due to familiarity or recollection (using a remember-know paradigm). Our results show that the increase in false alarms in older people due to repetition is produced by false recollection, calling into question both dual and single-process models of recognition. Also, older people falsely recollect details of never studied stimuli, a clear case of perceptual illusions. These results are better explained in terms of source-monitoring errors, mediated by people's retrieval expectations.

Exploring recollection and familiarity impairments in Parkinson's disease.

There is conflicting evidence on whether patients diagnosed with Parkinson's disease (PD) have cognitive deficits associated with episodic memory and particularly with recognition memory. The aim of the present study was to explore whether PD patients exhibit deficits in recollection and familiarity, the two processes involved in recognition. A sample of young healthy participants (22) was tested to verify that the experimental tasks were useful estimators of recognition processes. Two further samples--one of elderly controls (16) and one of PD patients (20)--were the main focus of this research. All participants were exposed to an associative recognition test aimed at estimating recollection followed by a two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) test designed to estimate familiarity. The analyses showed a deficit in associative recognition in PD patients and no difference between elderly controls and PD patients in the 2AFC test. By contrast, young healthy participants were better than elderly controls and PD patients in both components of recognition. Further analyses of results of the 2AFC test indicated that the measure chosen to estimate conceptual familiarity was adequate.

On familiarity deficits in mild cognitive impairment: a reply to Migo and Westerberg.

In this brief response to Migo and Westerberg we explain why we think that their criticism of our previous research showing familiarity deficits in mild cognitive impairment patients (MCI) is not sound. More concretely, we have replicated the effect several times previously, and we justify statistically the fact that in the previous paper we had to combine two MCI samples to demonstrate a reliable familiarity deficit. We note that there are several studies showing conflicting results. However, although the basis for these discrepancies remains uncertain, a new report has replicated the presence of deficits in familiarity, and more importantly, demonstrated its correlation with structural imaging biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease.

Recognition memory deficits in mild cognitive impairment.

There is no agreement on the pattern of recognition memory deficits characteristic of patients diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Whereas lower performance in recollection is the hallmark of MCI, there is a strong controversy about possible deficits in familiarity estimates when using recognition memory tasks. The aim of this research is to shed light on the pattern of responding in recollection and familiarity in MCI. Five groups of participants were tested. The main participant samples were those formed by two MCI groups differing in age and an Alzheimer's disease group (AD), which were compared with two control groups. Whereas one of the control groups served to assess the performance of the MCI and AD people, the other one, composed of young healthy participants, served the purpose of evaluating the adequacy of the experimental tasks used in the evaluation of the different components of recognition memory. We used an associative recognition task as a direct index of recollection and a choice task on a pair of stimuli, one of which was perceptually similar to those studied in the associative recognition phase, as an index of familiarity. Our results indicate that recollection decreases with age and neurological status, and familiarity remains stable in the elderly control sample but it is deficient in MCI. This research shows that a unique encoding situation generated deficits in recollective and familiarity mechanisms in mild cognitive impaired individuals, providing evidence for the existence of deficits in both retrieval processes in recognition memory in a MCI stage.

Familiarity changes as a function of perceptual shifts

This experiment compares the yes-no and forced recognition tests as methods of measuring familiarity. Participants faced a phase of 3 study-test recognition trials in which they studied words using all the letters of the alphabet (overlapping condition, O), and an additional phase in which targets and lures did not share any letters (non-overlapping condition, NO). Finally, subjects performed a forced-choice task in which they had to choose one of two new words, each from one of the subsets (Parkin et al., 2001). Results in the NO condition were better than in the O condition in the yes-no recognition test, while the forced-choice rate was significantly higher than .50, showing their sensitivity to familiarity. When the letter set of the words for study in the third list of the NO condition was switched, the difference between NO and O conditions disappeared in yes-no test, while the force-choice rate was not higher than .50. We conclude that both the yes-no test and the forced-choice test are valid and equivalent measures of familiarity under the right conditions (AU)

Este experimento compara tareas de reconocimiento convencionales (sí-no) y de elección forzosa como métodos de medición de la familiaridad. Los participantes realizaron tres tareas de estudio y reconocimiento convencional en las que estudiaron y reconocieron palabras compuestas por todas las letras del alfabeto (condición de solapamiento, O) y otras tantas tareas similares en las que las palabras a estudiar y reconocer, y las palabras de relleno no compartían ninguna letra (condición de no solapamiento, NO). Tras este último bloque de tareas los sujetos realizaban una tarea de elección forzosa en la que tenían que elegir entre dos palabras nuevas, cada una formada por un subconjunto de letras distintas (Parkin et al., 2001). Los resultados en la condición NO fueron mejores que en la condición O en las tareas de reconocimiento sí-no, mientras que la tasa de elecciones forzosas a favor de las palabras formadas por el subconjunto de letras estudiadas fue significativamente superior a 0.50, lo que muestra la sensibilidad de la tarea para medir familiaridad. Cuando en la tercera tarea de no solapamiento cambiamos sorpresivamente el conjunto de letras que formaban las palabras a estudiar y reconocer la diferencia entre las condiciones NO y O desapareció en la tarea de reconocimiento sí-no, mientras que la tasa de elección forzosa dejó de ser superior a 0.50. Se concluye que tanto las tareas de reconocimiento convencional como de elección forzosa dan medidas equivalentes de estimación de la familiaridad bajo las condiciones adecuadas (AU)

Familiarity changes as a function of perceptual shifts.

This experiment compares the yes-no and forced recognition tests as methods of measuring familiarity. Participants faced a phase of 3 study-test recognition trials in which they studied words using all the letters of the alphabet (overlapping condition, O), and an additional phase in which targets and lures did not share any letters (non-overlapping condition, NO). Finally, subjects performed a forced-choice task in which they had to choose one of two new words, each from one of the subsets (Parkin et al., 2001). Results in the NO condition were better than in the O condition in the yes-no recognition test, while the forced-choice rate was significantly higher than .50, showing their sensitivity to familiarity. When the letter set of the words for study in the third list of the NO condition was switched, the difference between NO and O conditions disappeared in yes-no test, while the force-choice rate was not higher than .50. We conclude that both the yes-no test and the forced-choice test are valid and equivalent measures of familiarity under the right conditions.

Recognition by familiarity is preserved in Parkinson's without dementia and Lewy-Body disease.

OBJECTIVE: The retrieval deficit hypothesis states that the lack of deficit in recognition often observed in patients with Parkinson's disease is because of the low retrieval requirements of the task, given that these patients have retrieval and not encoding deficits. To test this hypothesis we investigated recognition memory by familiarity in Parkinson's patients and in patients with Lewy Bodies disease and Parkinson with dementia. METHOD: We analyzed to what extent the experimental groups were able to recognize by familiarity in a typical yes/no recognition memory task. The experimental groups were patients with early nondemented Parkinson's disease, advanced nondemented Parkinson's disease, demented Parkinson's patients, and patients with dementia with Lewy Bodies. We compared their performance with a group of young and another group of old healthy participants. The estimation of familiarity was made by analyzing recognition of word targets and distractors consisting of combinations of different letters in comparison with a condition in which targets and distractors were composed of similar letters, even though subjects were unaware of the independent variable. RESULTS: The results indicate that familiarity was used at the same level by controls, patients with early Parkinson's disease and patients with dementia with Lewy Bodies. Although late Parkinson patients also used familiarity, its effect was only marginally significant. Patients with Parkinson's disease and dementia were not capable of using familiarity in recognition memory. CONCLUSIONS: Our results support the retrieval deficit hypothesis as Parkinson's patients without dementia show no deficit in a situation in which the retrieval requirements are minimal.

Familiarity-based recognition in the young, healthy elderly, mild cognitive impaired and Alzheimer's patients.

This study investigates the possible existence of deficits in familiarity in five samples of participants spanning a broad range of ages and cognitive states. Five groups of 16 participants with a diagnosis of multi-domain cognitive impairment with a slight or no deficit in memory, 16 multi-domain amnestic, and 16 Alzheimer's disease patients were compared in a recognition test with equivalent samples of old and young healthy participants. In one of the tests, participants studied words extracted from a restricted set of letters of the alphabet that were later mixed with new words from a different set. The unconscious use of the fluency produced by the repeated use of the set of letters was compared with a condition in which the same letter set did not play a role. Results indicated that amnestic mild cognitive impaired and Alzheimer's patients were unable to use letter fluency to improve recognition. However, young and old controls did not differ among themselves, whereas the multi-domain sample, whose memory performance was almost at the same level as that of controls showed slight levels of deficit in familiarity in the forced choice test but not in the recognition test. These results contrast sharply with those reported by Westerberg et al. [Westerberg, C. E., Paller, K. E., Holdstock, J. S., Mayes, A. R., & Reber, p. J. (2006). When memory does not fail: Familiarity-based recognition in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease. Neuropsychology, 20, 193-205] and Anderson et al. [Anderson, N. D., Ebert, P. L., Jennings, J. M., Grady, C. L., Cabeza, R., & Graham, S. J. (2008). Recollection- and familiarity-based memory in healthy aging and amnestic mild cognitive impairment. Neuropsychology, 22, 177-187], who concluded that there were no deficits in familiarity in these types of pre-dementia and dementia patients.

Perceptual and semantic familiarity in recognition memory: an event-related potential study.

Putative event-related potential correlates of perceptual and semantic bases of familiarity in recognition memory were examined with a categorized pictures recognition test. Our participants were presented, at study, with pictures of categorized objects and, at test, with either the very same pictures presented at study, different pictures of studied objects, pictures of new objects belonging to studied categories, or pictures of completely new-uncategorized objects. We found evidence for a parallel evaluation, within familiarity process, of both perceptual and semantic information. We also found new and interesting evidence for the existence of some common neural circuits involved in the FN400 effect, frontal component typically associated to familiarity, and the N400 effect, centro-parietal component typically elicited by 'semantically unexpected' linguistic stimuli.