Cognitive Estimation and Affective Judgments in Alcoholic Korsakoff Patients

Abstract

Alcoholic Korsakoff patients have their most marked deficits in memory, but may exhibit problems in further cognitive and behavioral domains, particularly in so-called frontal lobe functions and on the emotional level. Cognitive estimation is among the frontal lobe-associated functions; nevertheless, the underlying processes of estimation and estimation deficits are still unknown. Additionally, though affective judgments were found to be disturbed in Korsakoff patients one can question whether this result is due to a deficiency in emotional processing itself, or whether deteriorated basic processes underlying all kinds of judgment tasks result in affective judgment errors. In this study, possible relations and underlying cognitive processes of affective and nonaffective judgments (cognitive estimates) were analyzed in a large sample of 39 Korsakoff patients. A neuropsychological test battery was administered together with a new test for cognitive estimation consisting of four dimensions ('size,' 'weight,' 'quantity,' and 'time') and an affective judgment task comprising negative, neutral, and positive words. The Korsakoff patients' results showed marked deficits concerning both, cognitive estimation and affective judgments. These deficits were highly intercorrelated and performance in both tasks was related to basic (e.g., information processing speed) and higher cognitive functions (executive functions and memory), suggesting a common basis in cognitive estimation and in affective judgments in Korsakoff syndrome.

Judgment and memory performance for emotional stimuli in patients with alcoholic Korsakoff syndrome

“…For instance, Snitz, Hellinger and Daum (2002) found deficits in the ability to identify affective prosodies in spoken sentences. In line with these results KS patients in the study of Brand et al (2003a) were impaired in classifying nouns according to their emotional valence as positive, negative, or neutral. The authors reported that patients showed a marked tendency to judge neutral and negative words as positive.…”

“…The first trial of this task, designed to measure affective judgment abilities, contained 15 nouns with different affective valences (5 positive, 5 negative, and 5 neutral words; see Brand et al, 2003a). The order of word presentation was randomized.…”

“…Furthermore, abnormalities of paraventricular and periaqueductal gray matter and changes of the cerebellum and the basal forebrain, as well as an enlargement of the third and fourth ventricles, are also neuropathological signs of the KS (Cullen, Halliday, Caine, & Kril, 1997). Patients with KS also manifest prefrontal cortex degeneration (e.g., Kril, Halliday, Svoboda, & Cartwright, 1997), which may (at least partially) cause additional neuropsychological deterioration comprising time perception and orientation, cognitive estimation, and executive functioning (Brand et al, 2003a;Mimura, Kinsbourne, & O'Connor, 2000;Oscar-Berman, Kirkley, Gansler, & Couture, 2004;Shaw & Aggleton, 1994). Some findings also indicate emotional abnormalities in patients with KS, mostly attributed to dysfunctions within limbic structures.…”

“…The first task was taken from Brand et al (2003a) consisting of emotional words. In the second task, emotional and neutral pictures were presented to the participants.…”

Organic and psychogenic factors leading to executive dysfunctions in a patient suffering from surgery of a colloid cyst of the Foramen of Monro

“…These patients often show attentional and anterograde memory deficits beyond executive dysfunctions (Airaksinen Table 1. Results in the neuropsychological test battery (for test description see Brand et al, 2003;Spreen and Strauss, 1998) Egeland et al, 2003). ZZ showed average to above average performance in all tested neuropsychological domains except for executive functions (Table 1).…”