Prospective Memory Performance In Patients Research Articles

Activity-Based Prospective Memory in Insomniacs.

To investigate the activity-based prospective memory performance in patients with insomnia, divided, on the basis of actigraphic evaluation, into sleep onset, maintenance, mixed and negative misperception insomnia. A total of 153 patients with insomnia (I, 83 females, mean age + SD = 41.37 + 16.19 years) and 121 healthy controls (HC, 78 females, mean age + SD = 36.99 + 14.91 years) wore an actigraph for one week. Insomnia was classified into sleep onset insomnia (SOI), maintenance insomnia (MaI), mixed insomnia (MixI) and negative misperception insomnia (NMI). To study their activity-based prospective memory performance, all the participants were required to push the actigraph event marker button twice, at bedtime (task 1) and at get-up time (task 2). Only patients with maintenance and mixed insomnia had a significantly lower accuracy in the activity-based prospective memory task at get-up time compared with the healthy controls. The results show that maintenance and mixed insomnia involve an impaired activity-based prospective memory performance, while sleep onset and negative misperception insomnia do not seem to be affected. This pattern of results suggests that the fragmentation of sleep may play a role in activity-based prospective memory efficiency at wake-up in the morning.

Associations between intraindividual reaction time variability and prospective memory performance in patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls

ABSTRACT Introduction: Patients with schizophrenia exhibit prospective memory (PM) impairment. Intraindividual reaction time variability (IIRTV) is an index of attentional control that is required for PM. This study examined the differences in IIRTV between patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls and the relationship between IIRTV and PM performance. Method: Thirty-nine patients with schizophrenia and forty-two healthy controls were recruited to complete a PM task and the Sustained Attention to Response Task. IIRTV was calculated as the coefficient of variation (mean/SD) of reaction time over correctly responded trials in these tasks. Results: Patients with schizophrenia showed lower PM accuracy and increased IIRTV, while the associations between PM accuracy and IIRTV were significant in healthy controls but not in patients with schizophrenia. Conclusion: These findings suggest impaired PM and relationship between PM and attentional control in patients with schizophrenia.

Prospective Memory and Regional Functional Connectivity in Subcortical Ischemic Vascular Disease.

Objectives: Patients with subcortical ischemic vascular disease (SIVD) often have prominent frontal dysfunction. However, it remains unclear how SIVD affects prospective memory (PM), which strongly relies on the frontoparietal network. The present study aimed to investigate PM performance in patients with early stage SIVD as compared to those with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and to older adults with normal cognition, and to explore the neural correlates of PM deficits.Method: Patients with very-mild to mild dementia due to SIVD or AD and normal controls (NC) aged above 60 years were recruited. Seventy-three participants (20 SIVD, 22 AD, and 31 NC) underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), cognitive screening tests, and a computerized PM test. Sixty-five of these participants (19 SIVD, 20 AD, and 26 NC) also received resting-state functional MRI.Results: The group with SIVD had significantly fewer PM hits than the control group on both time-based and non-focal event-based PM tasks. Among patients in the very early stage, only those with SIVD but not AD performed significantly worse than the controls. Correlational analyses showed that non-focal event-based PM in SIVD was positively correlated with regional homogeneity in bilateral superior and middle frontal gyri, while time-based PM was not significantly associated with regional homogeneity in any of the regions of interest within the dorsal frontoparietal regions.Conclusions: The findings of this study highlight the vulnerability of non-focal event-based PM to the disruption of regional functional connectivity in bilateral superior and middle frontal gyri in patients with SIVD.

Dynamic Attention Regulation for Prospective Goals in Schizophrenia

Whether patients with schizophrenia are impaired in flexibly regulating attention in accordance with fluctuations in cognitive demand to achieve optimal task performance remains unclear. To address this issue, 47 patients with schizophrenia and 47 matched control participants were recruited to complete a time-based prospective memory task. Every 2-min block before the target time was divided into four 30-s intervals, after which the time check and intraindividual response time variability (IIRTV) across these intervals were calculated. Patients with schizophrenia displayed significantly higher IIRTV across all four time intervals and checked time less frequently during the last 30-s interval relative to control subjects. Moreover, the reduced change in time-checking frequency and IIRTV between the first and the last 30-s intervals was related to poorer time-based prospective memory performance in patients with schizophrenia. Our findings provide initial evidence that an inefficient capacity to dynamically allocate attentional resources during an ongoing task hinders dual-task performance in schizophrenia.

The effect of implementation intentions on prospective memory performance in patients with schizophrenia: A multinomial modeling approach

Patients with schizophrenia (SCZ) consistently show prospective memory (PM) impairments, and the technique of implementation intentions has been shown to improve PM performance in these patients. PM is considered to have prospective and retrospective components. However, it remains unclear which component of PM is impaired in patients with SCZ and which component(s) is facilitated by implementation intentions (II). The present study aimed to examine these two issues. Forty-two patients with SCZ and 42 matched healthy controls were randomly assigned to an II group or a typical instruction group. All participants were administered a color-matching PM task. Results showed that, using a multinomial-modeling approach, patients with SCZ exhibited impairment in the retrospective component of PM. In addition, while II improved the prospective PM component in healthy controls, both prospective and retrospective PM components in patients with SCZ were improved. Together, our results shed light on the mechanism of PM impairment in SCZ patients and the mechanism of II in improving PM performance.

The general facilitation effect of implementation intentions on prospective memory performance in patients with schizophrenia

ABSTRACTIntroduction: Prospective memory (PM) refers to remembering to execute a planned intention in the future. It can be divided into event- and time-based, according to the nature of the PM cue. Event-based PM cues can be classified as focal or non-focal. Patients with schizophrenia (SCZ) have been found to be impaired in both event- and time-based PM. PM has been found to be improved by implementation intentions, which is an encoding strategy in the format of “if X then Y”. This study examined the effect of implementation intentions on a non-focal event-based and a time-based PM task in patients with SCZ.Methods: Forty-two patients with SCZ and 42 healthy controls were allocated to either an implementation intention or a control PM instruction condition and were asked to complete two PM tasks. Results: Implementation intentions was found to improve performance in both the non-focal event-based and time-based PM tasks in patients with SCZ and healthy controls, with no costs to the ongoing task. The improvement in time-based PM performance in the implementation intentions condition was partially mediated by the frequency of clock checking behaviour. Conclusions: Implementation intentions can facilitate PM performance in patients with SCZ and has the potential to be used as a clinical intervention tool.

Effect of emotional cues on prospective memory performance in patients with schizophrenia and major depressive disorder

Prospective memory (PM) is the ability to remember to carry out future intentions when prompted by a cue, and previous studies have suggested that emotional PM cues may enhance PM performance. This study examined the influence of emotional cues on PM performance in patients with schizophrenia and major depressive disorder. All participants were required to respond to emotional or neutral PM cues while completing a working memory task. Healthy participants showed improved PM performance with positive and negative cues. Patients with major depressive disorder were not impaired in PM performance and showed significant improvement in PM performance when cued by negative but not positive cues. Patients with schizophrenia had impaired PM performance irrespective of cue emotionality. In addition, the majority of patients with schizophrenia failed to show an emotional enhancement effect, and only those who had normal arousal ratings for negative PM cues showed emotional enhancement effect. These findings show for the first time that patients with schizophrenia exhibit PM impairments even with emotional cues, and suggest that arousal may be a critical factor for schizophrenia patients to utilize emotional cues to facilitate execution of future actions. In patients with major depressive disorder, our findings suggest that the negative bias in attention and retrospective memory may also extend to memory for future actions. These novel findings have both theoretical and clinical implications.

SU43. The Effect of Implementation Intention on Different Types of Prospective Memory Performance in Patients With Schizophrenia

SU43. The Effect of Implementation Intention on Different Types of Prospective Memory Performance in Patients With Schizophrenia

Survivors of cardiac arrest with good neurological outcome show considerable impairments of memory functioning

BackgroundDeficits in cognitive function are a well-known dysfunction in survivors of cardiac arrest. However, data concerning memory function in this neurological vulnerable patient collective remain scarce and inconclusive. Therefore, we aimed to assess multiple aspects of retrospective and prospective memory performance in patients after cardiac arrest. MethodsWe prospectively enrolled 33 survivors of cardiac arrest, with cerebral performance categories (CPC) 1 and 2 and a control-group (n=33) matched in sex, age and educational-level. To assess retrospective and prospective memory performance we administrated 4 weeks after cardiac arrest the “Rey Adult Learning Test” (RAVLT), the “Digit-Span-Backwards Test”, the “Logic-Memory Test” and the “Red-Pencil Test”. ResultsResults indicate an impairment in immediate and delayed free recall, but not in recognition. However, the overall impairment in immediate recall was qualified by analyzing RAVLT performance, showing that patients were only impaired in trials 4 and 5 of the learning sequence. Moreover, working and prospective memory as well as prose recall were worse in cardiac arrest survivors. Cranial computed tomography was available in 61% of all patients (n=20) but there was no specific neurological damage detectable that could be linked to this cognitive impairment. ConclusionEpisodic long-term memory functioning appears to be particularly impaired after cardiac arrest. In contrast, short-term memory storage, even tested via free-call, seems not to be affected. Based on cranial computed tomography we suggest that global brain ischemia rather than focal brain lesions appear to underlie these effects.

Prospective memory performance in patients with drug-naïve, first-episode psychosis

Schizophrenia is associated with an impairment of prospective memory (PM) which refers to the ability to remember to carry out an intended action in the future. However, most of these studies were limited to chronic samples. The current study examined the event-based PM and time-based PM using a dual-task paradigm in 22 drug-naïve, first-episode psychosis (FEP) patients and 23 healthy controls. Results indicated that FEP patients performed significantly poorer than healthy controls in both event-based and time-based PM. However, the significant difference in time-based PM disappeared after controlling for working memory. Correlation analysis indicated that both types of PM did not correlate with positive symptoms or negative symptoms, duration of illness, or duration of untreated psychosis. However, time-based PM was correlated with the general psychopathology subscale of the PANSS. Taken together, these findings suggest that PM deficits are present in drug-naïve FEP patients; impairment of event-based PM appears to occur independently, whereas time-based PM impairment may be, in part, a secondary consequence of a working memory deficit.

Do Patients with Schizophrenia and Healthy Elderly People show Similar Patterns of Prospective Memory Performance?

Schizophrenia and normal aging have both been associated with structural and physiological changes in the prefrontal and temporal cortex and impairments in prospective memory (PM). This study aimed to compare PM performance in patients with schizophrenia, healthy older, and healthy younger individuals. Computerized event- and time-based PM tasks were administered to 30 patients with schizophrenia, 30 healthy older adults, and 30 healthy younger adults. The healthy older adults and patients with schizophrenia demonstrated deficits in time-based PM when compared with the healthy younger adults. However, only healthy older adults were found to be impaired in event-based PM when compared with the healthy younger adults. These findings suggest that patients with schizophrenia show a similar pattern of performance on one type but not another type of PM and provide only partial support for the accelerated aging hypothesis of schizophrenia.