False memories in obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome: evidence from the divided attention paradigm at encoding or retrieval

Abstract

Patients with obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS) exhibit impaired retrieval of item-specific information, increasing their propensity to generate false recognitions. The present study investigated the effect of OSAS on false recognition, using a divided-attention paradigm to examine whether reducing the availability of attentional resources during encoding or retrieval in healthy participants mimics the effect of OSAS. We tested four groups of participants, using the Deese - Roediger - McDermott paradigm: patients with OSAS and controls, either under full attention or under divided attention at encoding or retrieval. Results showed that divided attention at retrieval, but not at encoding, mimicked the effects of OSAS on memory performance, as controls in this group exhibited a higher level of false recognition than those under full attention, but a similar level of correct recognition. Our results suggest that the greater susceptibility of patients with OSAS to false recognition may be due to a limited availability of attentional resources, which may specifically disrupt retrieval processes.

Emotional Intelligence in Children with Severe Sleep-Related Breathing Disorders

“…In addition, OSAS has implications for job and academic performance and has been associated with potentially life-long cognitive impairment as well as sudden death. In this picture, cognitive alteration in memory domains has been showed in adults affected by severe OSAS particularly as greater susceptibility to false recognition [30], probably as direct effects of abnormalities in NREM sleep instability [31], or as specific proteomic biomarkers such as insulin and vascular signaling pathways such as prodromal for Alzheimer's disease [32] whereas ERP P300 and P300 means are considered to be electrophysiological measures that could be better indicators of cognitive changes than neuropsychological tests in OSAS, particularly in mildly affected patients [33–35].…”