Identification of famous faces and famous names in early Alzheimer'sdisease - Relationship to anterograde episodic and general semanticmemory
J.D.W. Greene
Bok Engelsk 1996
| Utgitt | 1996
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| Omfang | Side 111- 128
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| Opplysninger | We assessed remote memory in 33 patients with dementia of Alzheimer'stype (DAT) with Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores between17 and 30, and 30 matched controls using a Famous Faces Test andFamous Names Test designed to assess face recognition, identificationand naming, and name recognition and identification, respectively,together with a range of anterograde episodic and semantic memorytests. Patients with DAT were impaired on all components of theremote memory tests, i.e. Famous face recognition, identification andnaming, and famous name recognition and identification. There wasalso evidence of a modest temporal gradient, with relatively greaterimpairment of more recent memory, which may be artefactual resultingfrom the very insidious onset of their anterograde amnesia. Incontrast to the uniform impairment of anterograde memory, there wasconsiderable heterogeneity in performance on remote memory. Althoughthe DAT patient group's performance on remote memory measures wasimpaired with respect to controls, some patients had significantimpairment on all measures, whereas others had intact remote memory.Overall, there was only a weak correlation between dementia severityand remote memory, and no correlation between performance on theFaces and Names tests and measures of anterograde memory. At acognitive level, the deficit in face and name processing in DATinvolved recognition, identification and naming. This would suggestthat so called 'face and name recognition units', semantic knowledgeof famous persons and post-semantic processing are all affected bythe disease. There was also supporting evidence for the concept thatrecognition of famous faces and names both draw on common sources.Similar results were found for face and name identification. Thissuggests that face and name recognition units are closely linked, andthat identification of a face or name accesses the same central poolof semantic knowledge regarding the famous person. Performance onfamous names tests correlated, to a limited degree, with that ongeneral semantic tests, suggesting that knowledge of famous people,at feast as accessed by names, is associated with general semanticmemory. By contrast, no correlation was found between performance onthe famous faces and on other general semantic tasks.
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| Emner |
