9 - Sensory Capacities

Abstract

This chapter presents the analyses of the alcoholic Korsakoff patients' problems in terms of information-processing deficits regarding their sensory capacities. Motivated by the neuropathological and neuroanatomical considerations, Jones and her collaborators have assessed, in a series of three studies, the alcoholic Korsakoff patients' visual, auditory, olfactory, and gustatory senses. The most striking result of this initial study was the discovery of the alcoholic Korsakoff patients' severe impairment in olfactory discrimination. On the preliminary test dealing with common kitchen odorants, these patients were severely impaired in both the detection and identification of the substances. On the principal test with 0- and 30-sec delays, the alcoholic Korsakoff patients did not perform significantly better than chance. They averaged almost nine total errors in both delay conditions, and their scores are considerably inferior to those of the alcoholics and the nonalcoholic control group. Their second experiment included three groups of subjects: 10 alcoholic Korsakoff patients, 10 alcoholic control patients, and 10 non-alcoholic control individuals. Each subject was tested on scaling tasks involving assessment of stimulus intensity in vision, audition, and olfactory. In a third study, Jones, Butters, Moskowitz, and Montgomery attacked two issues that were unresolved by the first two studies. First, they asked whether alcoholic Wernicke–Korsakoff patients suffer an impairment of the other chemical sense, that of taste. Second, Jones had used only a single group of organic patients in her first two studies so some doubt remained concerning whether her reported olfactory deficits were specific to the alcoholic Korsakoff patients or represented a deficit manifested by all brain-damaged populations.