Linked Life Data

8931585

Source:http://linkedlifedata.com/resource/pubmed/id/8931585

Statements in which the resource exists as a subject.
PredicateObject
rdf:type
lifeskim:mentions
pubmed:dateCreated
1997-1-6
pubmed:abstractText
Disorientation is a common phenomenon in delirium and amnesia. It is thought to have an obvious explanation, i.e. disoriented patients fail to store the information crucial for the maintenance of orientation. In this study, we explored whether disorientation was indeed associated with a failure to learn new information or rather with a confusion of information within memory. Twenty-one patients with severe amnesia were examined. Orientation was tested with a 20-item questionnaire. Two runs of a continuous recognition task were used to test the ability to acquire information (first run of the task) and the tendency to confuse the temporal context of information acquisition (comparison of the second with the first run). We found that orientation was much better predicted by the measure of temporal context confusion (r = 0.90) than by the ability to simply acquire information (r = 0.54). Superimposition of neuroradiological scans demonstrated that increased temporal context confusion was associated with medial orbitofrontal or basal forebrain damage; patients with normal levels of temporal context confusion did not have damage to these areas. We conclude that disorientation more often indicates a confusion of memory traces from different events, i.e. increased temporal context confusion, than an inability to learn new information. Disorientation appears to reflect primarily a failure of the orbitofrontal contribution to memory.
pubmed:language
eng
pubmed:journal
pubmed:citationSubset
AIM
pubmed:status
MEDLINE
pubmed:month
Oct
pubmed:issn
0006-8950
pubmed:author
pubmed:issnType
Print
pubmed:volume
119 ( Pt 5)
pubmed:owner
NLM
pubmed:authorsComplete
Y
pubmed:pagination
1627-32
pubmed:dateRevised
2006-11-15
pubmed:meshHeading
pubmed:year
1996
pubmed:articleTitle
Disorientation in amnesia. A confusion of memory traces.
pubmed:affiliation
University Department of Neurology, Inselspital, Bern, Switzerland.
pubmed:publicationType
Journal Article, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't