Our understanding of human memory has gained greatly from the study of individuals with impaired memory but rather less from outstandingly high levels of memory performance. Exceptions include the ...case of London taxi drivers whose extensive route learning results in modification of their hippocampus. Our study involves a group whose extensive verbal learning potentially provides a similar natural experiment. The Muslim faith encourages followers to memorise the whole of the Qur'an, some 77,449 words in its classic Arabic form. Successful memorisers are known as "Hafiz". We tested 10 Hafiz, 12 background-matched Muslim controls and 10 non-Muslim participants, on their detailed knowledge of the Qur'an and on their performance on standard measures of verbal and visuospatial learning. We found no differences between the three groups in their capacity to memorise verbal or visuospatial material and hence no evidence of generalisation of learning capacity in the Hafiz group. More surprisingly, however, half of the Hafiz group did not understand Arabic but were equivalent in Qur'anic memory to those who did. Given the importance that meaning is typically assumed to play in long-term memory, this was unexpected. We discuss the practical and theoretical implications of these results for verbal memory and long-term learning.
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BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Medial temporal lobe atrophy has been linked to decline in neuropsychological measures of explicit memory function. While the hippocampus has long been identified as a critical structure in learning ...and memory processes, less is known about contributions of the amygdala to these functions. We sought to investigate the relationship between amygdala volume and memory functioning in a clinical sample of older adults with and without cognitive impairment.
A serial clinical sample of older adults that underwent neuropsychological assessment at an outpatient neurology clinic was selected for retrospective chart review. Patients were included in the study if they completed a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment within six months of a structural magnetic resonance imaging scan. Regional brain volumes were quantified using Neuroreader® software. Associations between bilateral hippocampal and amygdala volumes and memory scores, derived from immediate and delayed recall conditions of a verbal story learning task and a visual design reconstruction task, were examined using mixed-effects general linear models, controlling for total intracranial volume, scanner model, age, sex and education. Partial correlation coefficients, adjusted for these covariates, were calculated to estimate the strength of the association between volumes and memory scores.
A total of 68 (39 F, 29 M) participants were included in the analyses, with a mean (SD) adjusted age of 80.1 (6.0) and educational level of 15.9 (2.5) years. Controlling for age, sex, education, and total intracranial volume, greater amygdala volumes were associated with better verbal and visual memory performance, with effect sizes comparable to hippocampal volume. No significant lateralized effects were observed. Partial correlation coefficients ranged from 0.47 to 0.33 (p<.001).
These findings contribute to a growing body of knowledge identifying the amygdala as a target for further research in memory functioning. This highlights the importance of considering the broader functioning of the limbic system in which multiple subcortical structures contribute to memory processes and decline in older adults.
This study investigated the neuropsychological profile of college students who engage in binge drinking (BD) using comprehensive neuropsychological tests evaluating verbal/non-verbal memory, ...executive functions, and attention. Groups were determined based on scores on the Korean version of the Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test (AUDIT-K) and Alcohol Use Questionnaire (AUQ). There were 79 and 81 participants in the BD and non-BD groups, respectively. We administered the Korean version of the California Verbal Learning Test (K-CVLT) and Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test (RCFT) to evaluate verbal and non-verbal memory, respectively, and measured executive functions using the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), Trail-Making Test, Controlled Oral Word Association Test and Stroop Color-Word Test. We administered the d2 test to evaluate attention. Neuropsychological performance was analyzed by multivariate analysis of variance. The BD group showed significantly poorer performance in the long-term free recall condition of the K-CVLT and delayed recall condition of the RCFT and completed significantly fewer categories on the WCST than the non-BD group. In addition, there were significant negative associations among the AUDIT-K total score, AUQ binge score, and long-term free recall score of the K-CVLT. There were significant negative associations between the total AUDIT-K score and delayed recall RCFT score, and between the total AUDIT-K total score and numbers of completed categories on the WCST. These results indicate that college students who participate in BD have difficulties with verbal/non-verbal memory and executive functions, and further suggest that excessive alcohol use could have detrimental effects on the hippocampal-prefrontal circuit even with a relatively short period of alcohol use.
It has been claimed that working memory training programs produce diverse beneficial effects. This article presents a meta-analysis of working memory training studies (with a pretest-posttest design ...and a control group) that have examined transfer to other measures (nonverbal ability, verbal ability, word decoding, reading comprehension, or arithmetic; 87 publications with 145 experimental comparisons). Immediately following training there were reliable improvements on measures of intermediate transfer (verbal and visuospatial working memory). For measures of far transfer (nonverbal ability, verbal ability, word decoding, reading comprehension, arithmetic) there was no convincing evidence of any reliable improvements when working memory training was compared with a treated control condition. Furthermore, mediation analyses indicated that across studies, the degree of improvement on working memory measures was not related to the magnitude of far-transfer effects found. Finally, analysis of publication bias shows that there is no evidential value from the studies of working memory training using treated controls. The authors conclude that working memory training programs appear to produce short-term, specific training effects that do not generalize to measures of "real-world" cognitive skills. These results seriously question the practical and theoretical importance of current computerized working memory programs as methods of training working memory skills.
The purpose of this meta-analysis was to determine the relation between mathematics and working memory (WM) and to identify possible moderators of this relation including domains of WM, types of ...mathematics skills, and sample type. A meta-analysis of 110 studies with 829 effect sizes found a significant medium correlation of mathematics and WM, r = .35, 95% confidence interval .32, .37. Moderation analyses indicated that mathematics showed comparable association with verbal WM, numerical WM, and visuospatial WM. Word-problem solving and whole-number calculations showed the strongest relation with WM whereas geometry showed the weakest relation with WM. The relation between WM and mathematics was stronger among individuals with mathematics difficulties that are associated with other disorders or cognitive deficits compared with that among typically developing individuals and individuals with only mathematics difficulties. The implications of these findings with respect to mathematics instruction and WM training are discussed.
Antipsychotic treatment resistance affects up to a third of individuals with schizophrenia. Of those affected, 70–84% are reported to be treatment resistant from the outset. This raises the ...possibility that the neurobiological mechanisms of treatment resistance emerge before the onset of psychosis and have a neurodevelopmental origin. Neuropsychological investigations can offer important insights into the nature, origin and pathophysiology of treatment-resistant schizophrenia (TRS), but methodological limitations in a still emergent field of research have obscured the neuropsychological discriminability of TRS. We report on the first systematic review and meta-analysis to investigate neuropsychological differences between TRS patients and treatment-responsive controls across 17 published studies (1864 participants). Five meta-analyses were performed in relation to (1) executive function, (2) general cognitive function, (3) attention, working memory and processing speed, (4) verbal memory and learning, and (5) visual−spatial memory and learning. Small-to-moderate effect sizes emerged for all domains. Similarly to previous comparisons between unselected, drug-naïve and first-episode schizophrenia samples v. healthy controls in the literature, the largest effect size was observed in verbal memory and learning dl = −0.53; 95% confidence interval (CI) −0.29 to −0.76; z = 4.42; p < 0.001. A sub-analysis of language-related functions, extracted from across the primary domains, yielded a comparable effect size (dl = −0.53, 95% CI −0.82 to −0.23; z = 3.45; p < 0.001). Manipulating our sampling strategy to include or exclude samples selected for clozapine response did not affect the pattern of findings. Our findings are discussed in relation to possible aetiological contributions to TRS.
Summary
Sleep‐dependent memory consolidation is disturbed in patients with schizophrenia, who furthermore show reductions in sleep spindles and probably also in delta power during sleep. The memory ...dysfunction in these patients is one of the strongest markers for worse long‐term functional outcome. However, therapeutic interventions to normalise memory functions, e.g., with medication, still do not exist. Against this backdrop, we investigated to what extent a non‐invasive approach enhancing sleep with real‐time auditory stimulation in‐phase with slow oscillations might affect overnight memory consolidation in patients with schizophrenia. To this end, we examined 18 patients with stably medicated schizophrenia in a double‐blinded sham‐controlled design. Memory performance was assessed by a verbal (word list) and a non‐verbal (complex figure) declarative memory task. In comparison to a sham condition without auditory stimuli, we found that in patients with schizophrenia, auditory stimulation evokes an electrophysiological response similar to that in healthy participants leading to an increase in slow wave and temporally coupled sleep spindle activity during stimulation. Despite this finding, patients did not show any beneficial effect on the overnight change in memory performance by stimulation. Although the stimulation in our study did not improve the patient's memory, the electrophysiological response gives hope that auditory stimulation could enable us to provide better treatment for sleep‐related detriments in these patients in the future.
To remember what one did yesterday is an example of an everyday episodic memory task, in which a female advantage has sometimes been reported. Here, we quantify the impact of sex on episodic memory ...performance and investigate whether the magnitude of the sex difference is modified by study-, task-, and sample-specific moderators. Analyses were based on 617 studies conducted between 1973 and 2013 with 1,233,921 participants. A 5-level random-effects meta-analysis showed an overall female advantage in episodic memory (g = 0.19, 95% CI 0.17, 0.21). The material to be remembered affected the magnitude of this advantage, with a female advantage for more verbal tasks, such as words, sentences, and prose (g = 0.28, 95% CI 0.25, 0.30), nameable images (g = 0.16, 95% CI 0.11, 0.22), and locations (g = 0.16, 95% CI 0.11, 0.21), and a male advantage in more spatial tasks, such as abstract images (g = −0.20, 95% CI −0.35, -0.05) and routes (g = −0.24, 95% CI −0.35, -0.12). Furthermore, there was a female advantage for materials that cannot easily be placed along the verbal-spatial continuum, such as faces (g = 0.26, 95% CI 0.20, 0.33), and odor, taste, and color (g = 0.37, 95% CI 0.18, 0.55). These differences have remained stable since 1973. For verbal episodic memory tasks, differences were larger in Europe, North America, Oceania, and South America than in Asia, and smaller in childhood and old age than for other ages. Taken together, results suggest that men may use their spatial advantage in spatially demanding episodic memory tasks, whereas women do well in episodic memory tasks that are verbalizable and tasks that are neither verbal nor spatial, such as remembering faces and odors/tastes/colors.
Public Significance Statement
When we attempt to remember what we did yesterday, we are using episodic memory. Here, we investigate sex differences in episodic memory and find a general female advantage in tasks that are predominantly verbal, which is lesser in those that also require some spatial processing, and a male advantage in tasks that require a large degree of spatial processing. These sex differences have remained stable since 1973, although they vary in magnitude across geographical region and, for verbal episodic memory, are smaller in childhood and old age than at other ages.
Objective: This study examined the utility of the Chinese-language translations of the word list memory test (Philadelphia Verbal Learning Test) and story memory test (Logical Memory subtest of the ...Wechsler Memory Scale) for differentiating cognitive diagnosis in older U.S. Chinese immigrants. Method: Participants were ≥60 years old, with Chinese language proficiency to complete a diagnostic workup at the Mount Sinai's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. The workup included an evaluation by a geriatric psychiatrist and cognitive testing with a psychometrician. Diagnosis of normal, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and dementia was made independent of the cognitive tests at consensus led by a dementia expert physician. Multivariable logistic regression models were used to assess the sensitivity of story and word list memory tests for distinguishing between groups. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC area/area under the curve AUC) was used to compare the predictive accuracy of the two tests. Results: The sample included 71 participants with normal cognition, 42 with MCI, and 24 with dementia. The MCI group was older and less educated than normal controls but younger and more educated than the dementia group. Delayed recall of both memory tests, but not immediate recall of either test, predicted diagnosis. While composite memory score of word list (AUC = 0.90) predicted diagnosis slightly better than that of stories (AUC = 0.85), the difference was not significant in this small sample (p = .14). Conclusions: Chinese-language translations of verbal memory tests, in particular delayed recall scores, were equally sensitive for classifying cognitive diagnosis in older U.S. Chinese immigrants.
Key Points
Question: The purpose of the present study was to examine the sensitivity of the Chinese translation of word list learning test and story recall test for differentiating cognitive diagnosis of normal aging, mild cognitive impairment, and dementia. Findings: Chinese translation of verbal memory tests during the delayed recall trials provides the greatest sensitivity to detect cognitive diagnosis. Importance: Chinese translation of verbal memory tests can be used as a diagnostic tool for identifying cognitive impairment. Next Steps: Examination of test equivalence between Chinese and English versions of verbal memory tests will be needed to identify potential bias across the two language versions.
In an influential article, Jones et al. (1995) provide evidence that auditory distraction by changing relative to repetitive auditory distracters (the changing-state effect) did not differ between a ...visual–verbal and visual–spatial serial recall task, providing evidence for an amodal mechanism for the representation of serial order in short-term memory that transcends modalities. This finding has been highly influential for theories of short-term memory and auditory distraction. However, evidence vis-à-vis the robustness of this result is sorely lacking. Here, two high-powered replications of Jones et al.’s (1995) crucial Experiment 4 were undertaken. In the first partial replication ( n = 64), a fully within-participants design was adopted, wherein participants undertook both the visual–verbal and visual–spatial serial recall tasks under different irrelevant sound conditions, without a retention period. The second near-identical replication ( n = 128), incorporated a retention period and implemented the task-modality manipulation as a between-participants factor, as per the original Jones et al. (1995; Experiment 4) study. In both experiments, the changing-state effect was observed for visual–verbal serial recall but not for visual–spatial serial recall. The results are consistent with modular and interference-based accounts of distraction and challenge some aspects of functional equivalence accounts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)
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