Short-Term Motor Memory in Korsakoff Patients

1975 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 275-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laird S. Cermak ◽  
Barbara Uhly

10 amnesic alcoholic Korsakoff patients were compared with 10 chronic alcoholics for their ability to retain a simple motor movement over either a 10- or 20-sec. interval. During this interval the opportunity for rehearsal was minimized by having the patients engage in either a verbal or a motor distractor task. Under both conditions the Korsakoff patients were impaired relative to the control subjects, with very little difference between the two types of interference. It was concluded that Korsakoff patients have a short-term motor retention deficit that cannot be explained simply as an inability to mediate the task verbally.

1975 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 535-538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip H. Marshall ◽  
Susan L. Wyatt ◽  
Shirley A. Moore ◽  
Stephen E. Sigman

An investigation was conducted to ascertain the influence of the duration of the time interval between successive repetitions of a discrete motor movement in a short-term motor memory paradigm. With one repetition a long interval increased error relative to a short interval. The opposite was true for seven repetitions; a long interval improved accuracy. The results were discussed in terms of the “trace shrinkage” hypothesis and compared with those from similar studies using verbal responses.


1991 ◽  
Vol 260 (3) ◽  
pp. E395-E402 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. J. Boyle ◽  
P. E. Cryer

We tested the hypotheses that growth hormone, cortisol, or both are involved in defense against but are not critical to recovery from prolonged hypoglycemia and that the putative roles of these hormones in defense against prolonged hypoglycemia are permissive rather than direct. To do so we studied control subjects (n = 10) and patients with growth hormone and cortisol deficiencies resulting from hypopituitarism both in the untreated state (n = 7) and with prestudy and basal intrastudy growth hormone and cortisol replacement (n = 6). Postabsorptive plasma glucose, insulin, glucagon, and epinephrine concentrations were no different in the untreated patients and controls. Twelve-hour insulin infusions, in low doses adjusted over the 1st 2 h to produce plasma glucose concentrations of 3.6 mmol/l (65 mg/dl) and then fixed at that dose, resulted in significantly (P less than 0.0001) lower late plasma glucose concentrations in the patients, without and with replacement. The 12-h plasma glucose concentrations were 2.9 +/- 0.1 mmol/l (53 +/- 1 mg/dl) in the control subjects, 2.4 +/- 0.1 mmol/l (43 +/- 2 mg/dl; P less than 0.001 vs. control) in the deficient patients, and 2.5 +/- 0.1 mmol/l (45 +/- 2 mg/dl; P less than 0.01 vs. control) in the replaced patients. Rates of glucose recovery from hypoglycemia after discontinuation of insulin were identical in all three studies. Thus growth hormone, cortisol, or probably both play a demonstrable role in defense against prolonged, in contrast to short-term, hypoglycemia in humans. This does not appear to be the result of permissive actions of the hormones and is therefore best attributed to their increments during hypoglycemia.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


2003 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 342-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rivian Weinerman ◽  
VI Glossop ◽  
Randy Wong ◽  
Lara Robinson ◽  
Karen White ◽  
...  

Objectives: To identify the patient profile of first-time no-shows (FTNS) and to examine which process variables predict FTNS. Method: We developed a questionnaire exploring variables that might impact attendance. Of 779 referrals over 9 months, all FTNS ( n = 60) and a sample of randomly selected control subjects ( n = 60) completed the questionnaire. Results: The FTNS rate was 7.7%. A set of 10 variables predicted FTNS at 80% accuracy. Most significant was our finding that “time of day of first appointment” showed a novel and practical difference between FTNS and control subjects. Patients were 3.6 times more likely to show for first appointments scheduled in the afternoon. Conclusions: Simply making first appointments in the afternoon could significantly decrease FTNS incidence.


1995 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Goerlich ◽  
I. Daum ◽  
I. Hertrich ◽  
H. Ackermann

The present study investigated the relationship between verbal short-term memory and motor speech processes in healthy control subjects and five patients suffering from Broca's aphasia. Control subjects showed a phonological similarity effect, a word length effect and an articulatory suppression effect, supporting the hypothesis of a phonological store and an articulatory loop component of short-term memory. A similar effect of phonological similarity was observed in the aphasic patients, while the effects of word length and articulatory suppression were reduced. In control subjects, measures of short-term memory were correlated to measures of motor speech rate only if speech rate was assessed in more complex conditions (such as sentence rather than syllable repetition). There was also evidence of an association of speech impairment and short-term memory deficits in the aphasic patients.


1970 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 231-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
George E. Stelmach ◽  
Julie L. Barber

Retention of kinesthetic information from blind positioning responses was examined for 56 Ss. During a 30-sec. retention interval, half of the Ss sat quietly with their hands on the lever; the other half learned an interpolated target which required an antagonistic response. Both conditions showed significant amounts of forgetting. The mean differences between conditions as well as the differences between correlation coefficients across retention intervals were not significant. The results were consistent with memory-trace decay predictions.


1993 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. M. Lowe ◽  
A. Green ◽  
J. M. Rhodes ◽  
M. Lombard ◽  
R. Jalan ◽  
...  

1. The short-term (120 min) kinetics of Zn turnover has been studied in control subjects and patients with alcoholic liver disease after intravenous injection of 0.5 mg of 96.5% enriched 70ZnCl2. 2. The 70Zn enrichment of plasma was found closely to obey two-compartment kinetics and the derived two-component decay equation has been used to calculate the size and turnover of the initial two rapidly exchanging pools of body Zn. 3. In normal subjects isotopic Zn appears initially to equilibrate with the whole of the plasma Zn which comprises the first metabolic compartment, pool a. This has a size of 0.72 ± 0.1 μmol/kg. 70Zn equilibration then occurs with a second compartment, pool b, consistent with a rapidly exchanging liver Zn pool of size 3.60 ± 0.93 μmol/kg. The fractional turnover rate of pool b was found to be fivefold slower than that of pool a. 4. In the alcoholic group an expansion of pool a was observed (1.63 ± 0.39 μmol/kg), but the size of the second pool was not significantly different from that of control subjects (5.55 ± 1.0 μmol/kg), although its fractional turnover was significantly increased (Kab: control subjects, 0.018 ± 0.002 min−1, alcoholic patients, 0.031 ± 0.006 min−1). 5. These data therefore demonstrate that kinetic studies using stable isotopes of Zn can provide novel information on exchangeable Zn pools in man, but provide no support for the possibility of an underlying Zn depletion in patients with alcoholic liver disease.


1976 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
George E. Stelmach ◽  
J. A. Scott Kelso ◽  
Penny Dorrance McCullagh
Keyword(s):  

1976 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
John L. Craft

Rehearsal of kinesthetic information in motor short-term memory was investigated using a sequential motor movement task. In Exp. 1, the subjects executed 3 blind linear movements and recalled one of them. In Exp. 2, the subjects executed 3 movements while receiving visual and/or verbal information regarding the extent of movement and then recalled one of them. Results indicated that the availability of visual and/or verbal information for covert rehearsal is sufficient to maintain movement extent information in short-term memory but that availability of kinesthetic information alone for covert rehearsal is not.


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