Search

Objectives:Neuropsychological studies of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have revealed deficits in attention/working memory, processing speed, executive functioning, and retrospective memory. However, little is known about prospective memory (PM) in PTSD, a clinically relevant aspect of episodic memory that supports the encoding and retrieval of intentions for future actions.Methods:Here we examined PM performance in 40 veterans with PTSD compared to 38 trauma comparison (TC) veterans who were exposed to combat but did not develop PTSD. All participants were administered the Memory for Intentions Test (MIST; Raskin, Buckheit, & Sherrod, 2010), a standardized and validated measure of PM, alongside a comprehensive neurocognitive battery, structured diagnostic interviews for psychiatric conditions, and behavioral questionnaires.Results:Veterans with PTSD performed moderately lower than TC on time-based PM, with errors primarily characterized as PM failure errors (i.e., omissions). However, groups did not differ in event-based PM, ongoing task performance, or post-test recognition of PM intentions for each trial. Lower time-based PM performance was specifically related to hyperarousal symptoms of PTSD. Time-based-performance was also associated with neuropsychological measures of retrospective memory and executive functions in the PTSD group. Nevertheless, PTSD was significantly associated with poorer PM above and beyond age and performance in retrospective memory and executive functions.Discussion:Results provide initial evidence of PM dysfunction in PTSD, especially in strategic monitoring during time-based PM tasks. Findings have potential implications for everyday functioning and health behaviors in persons with PTSD, and deserve replication and future study. (JINS, 2016,22, 724–734)

Two experiments were conducted to examine the effects of task importance on event-based prospective memory (PM)in separate samples of adults with HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) and HIV-infected young adultswith substance use disorders (SUD). All participants completed three conditions of an ongoing lexical decision task:(1) without PM task requirements; (2) with PM task requirements that emphasized the importance of the ongoing task;and (3) with PM task requirements that emphasized the importance of the PM task. In both experiments, all HIV+ groupsshowed the expected increase in response costs to the ongoing task when the PM task’s importance was emphasized. InExperiment 1, individuals with HAND showed significantly lower PM accuracy as compared to HIV+ subjects withoutHAND when the importance of the ongoing task was emphasized, but improved significantly and no longer differedfrom HIV+ subjects without HAND when the PM task was emphasized. A similar pattern of findings emerged inExperiment 2, whereby HIV+ young adults with SUD (especially cannabis) showed significant improvements in PMaccuracy when the PM task was emphasized. Findings suggest that both HAND and SUD may increase the amount ofcognitive attentional resources that need to be allocated to support PM performance in persons living with HIV infection.(JINS, 2014, 20, 652–662)Keywords: Infectious disease, Episodic memory, AIDS dementia complex, Marijuana abuse, Attention, Substance-relateddisorders

Prospective memory (PM) is dependent on executive processes known to be impaired in Huntington's disease (HD); however, no study to the authors’ knowledge has investigated PM in this group. We examined performance-based, semi-naturalistic, and self-reported PM in 20 individuals diagnosed with mild–moderate HD and 20 demographically similar controls. Relative to controls, HD participants demonstrated significantly lower scores in time-based PM, event-based PM (at a trend level), and the semi-naturalistic PM trial, all of which were marked by omission errors. HD participants demonstrated comparable recognition memory for the PM intentions relative to controls. HD and control participants also showed comparable scores in self-reported PM complaints. The results suggest that HD is associated with deficits in the strategic aspects of PM. HD-associated PM deficits also are evident in real-world situations, which may relate to an apparent meta-memory deficit for PM functioning as indicated by HD participants’ overestimation of their PM performance on self-report. (JINS, 2014, 20, 1–8)

Sensorimotor inhibition, or the ability to filter out excessive or irrelevant information, theoretically supports a variety of higher-level cognitive functions. Impaired inhibition may be associated with increased impulsive and risky behavior in everyday life. Individuals infected with HIV frequently show impairment on tests of neurocognitive function, but sensorimotor inhibition in this population has not been studied and may be a contributor to the profile of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND). Thirty-seven HIV-infected individuals (15 with HAND) and 48 non-infected comparison subjects were assessed for prepulse inhibition (PPI), an eyeblink startle paradigm measuring sensorimotor gating. Although HIV status alone was not associated with PPI deficits, HIV-positive participants meeting criteria for HAND showed impaired PPI compared to cognitively intact HIV-positive subjects. In HIV-positive subjects, PPI was correlated with working memory but was not associated with antiretroviral therapy or illness factors. In conclusion, sensorimotor disinhibition in HIV accompanies deficits in higher-order cognitive functions, although the causal direction of this relationship requires investigation. Subsequent research on the role of sensorimotor gating on decision-making and risk behaviors in HIV may be indicated. (JINS, 2013,19, 1–9)

Although individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) evidence moderate deficits in prospective memory (PM), it is not known whether PM deficits confer an increased risk of poorer everyday functioning. In the current study, 33 individuals with PD and 26 demographically similar normal controls (NC) were administered performance-based and self-report measures of PM and everyday functioning, including medication and financial management. As compared to NC, PD participants demonstrated significantly lower scores on performance-based measures of PM and financial capacity, worse performance at a trend level on performance-based medication management and endorsed significantly greater self-reported declines in PM and instrumental activities of daily living (iADLs). In the PD sample, the laboratory measure of PM significantly correlated with performance-based measures of financial capacity and medication management and a self-report measure of medication management. Self-reported PM failures significantly correlated with perceived declines in iADLs, worse medication management, and poorer health-related quality of life. Although future studies are needed to examine the incremental ecological validity of PM in PD, findings from this study extend prior research by providing preliminary evidence that PM impairment may play a significant role in a range of critical everyday functions in PD. (JINS, 2012, 18, 1–10)

Despite the prevalence of HIV-associated episodic memory impairment and its adverse functional impact, there are no empirically validated cognitive rehabilitation strategies for HIV-infected persons. The present study examined the self-generation approach, which is theorized to enhance new learning by elaborating and deepening encoding. Participants included 54 HIV-infected and 46 seronegative individuals, who learned paired word associates in both self-generated and didactic encoding experimental conditions. Results revealed main effects of HIV serostatus and encoding condition, but no interaction. Planned comparisons showed that both groups recalled significantly more words learned in the self-generation condition, and that HIV+ individuals recalled fewer words overall compared to their seronegative counterparts at delayed recall. Importantly, HIV+ participants with clinical memory impairment evidenced similar benefits of self-generation compared to unimpaired HIV+ subjects. Self-generation strategies may improve verbal recall in individuals with HIV infection and may, therefore, be an appropriate and potentially effective cognitive rehabilitation tool in this population. (JINS, 2012, 18, 128–133)

Action (verb) fluency is a newly developed verbal fluency task that requires the examinee to rapidly generate as many verbs (i.e., "things that people do") as possible within 1 min. Existing literature indicates that action fluency may be more sensitive to frontal-basal ganglia loop pathophysiology than traditional noun fluency tasks (e.g., animal fluency), which is consistent with the hypothesized neural dissociation between noun and verb retrieval. In the current study, a series of analyses were undertaken to examine the psychometric properties of action fluency in a sample of 174 younger healthy participants. The first set of analyses describes the development of demographically adjusted normative data for action fluency. Next, a group of hypothesis-driven correlational analyses reveals significant associations between action fluency and putative tests of executive functions, verbal working memory, verbal fluency, and information processing speed, but not between action fluency and tests of learning or constructional praxis. The final set of analyses demonstrates the test-retest stability of the action fluency test and provides standards for determining statistically reliable changes in performance. In sum, this study enhances the potential clinical applicability of action fluency by providing demographically adjusted normative data and demonstrating evidence for its reliability and construct validity.

To identify the cognitive characteristics predictive of incident dementia in Parkinson's disease (PD), we examined the baseline neuropsychological profiles of 18 initially non-demented patients with PD who met diagnostic criteria for dementia (PDD) at one-year follow-up. PDD participants' baseline neuropsychological test scores were compared to the baseline performance of 18 patients with PD who did not meet criteria for dementia at one-year follow-up (PDND) and 18 normal controls (NC). The three groups were matched on baseline demographic and disease variables. Relative to the PDND group, the incident PDD participants demonstrated significantly poorer performance on digits backward (Wechsler Memory Scale–Revised), word list learning and recognition (California Verbal Learning Test), and perseverative errors on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. Each of these baseline neuropsychological variables exhibited adequate diagnostic classification accuracy in predicting PDD and PDND group membership at follow-up. These results suggest that subtle frontal/executive dysfunction is evident during the immediate PDD prodrome and may be of prognostic value in identifying PD patients at risk for dementia. Accordingly, neuropsychological evaluation may facilitate early identification of PDD and thereby inform appropriate dispositional planning. (JINS, 2003, 9, 17–24.)