Visual paired comparison performance is impaired in a patient with selective hippocampal lesions and relatively intact item recognition

Abstract

In this study, we have examined visual recognition memory in a patient, YR, with discrete hippocampal damage who has shown normal or nearly normal item recognition over a large number of tests. We directly compared her performance as measured using a visual paired comparison task (VPC) with her performance on delayed matching to sample (DMS) tasks. We also investigated the effect of retention interval between familiarisation and test. YR shows good visual recognition with the DMS task up to 10 s after the familiarisation period, but only shows recognition with the VPC task for the shortest retention interval (0 s). Our results are consistent with the view that hippocampal damage disrupts recollection and recall, but not item familiarity memory.

Accounting for change in declarative memory: A cognitive neuroscience perspective

“…This result suggests that extrahippocampal areas may be support the expression of novelty preferences in the short term, but that the hippocampus is critical when delayed recognition is required (Nelson, 1995). These results are also consistent with data from adult amnesics showing that the effect of hippocampal damage is most apparent during delayed VPC testing (McKee & Squire, 1993;Pascalis et al, 2004).…”

“…For example, Nemanic, Alvarado, and Bachevalier (2004) showed that monkeys with lesions to the hippocampus who were impaired on the VPC task did not exhibit impairments on a delayed nonmatching to sample (DNMS) task. Patients with damage to medial temporal lobe systems also show impaired VPC performance but relatively intact recognition (McKee & Squire, 1993;Pascalis et al, 2004). These results suggest that the hippocampus may be critical for the expression of novelty preferences specifically, rather than performance on visual recognition tasks generally.…”

“…This assumption has proven correct in the case of the deferred imitation task, however, prospective studies of infants and children who have incurred early damage to the hippocampus are required to determine whether this assumption also holds for other infant memory tasks. Isaac, & Mayes, 2004). In addition, studies with infants and adults have demonstrated that performance on the VPC task is affected by study time, retention interval, and context change in the same way that these variables affect adults' performance on other measures of declarative memory (Bahrick & Pickens, 1995;Richmond, Sowerby, Colombo, & Hayne, 2004;Robinson & Pascalis, 2004;Rose, Gottfried, Melloy-Carminar, & Bridger, 1982).…”

Change in background context disrupts performance on visual paired comparison following hippocampal damage

“…YR's memory performance has been reported extensively (Mayes et al, 2001(Mayes et al, , 2004Holdstock, Mayes, Roberts et al, 2002), and is briefly summarised here. Her current FSIQ (WAIS-R; Wechsler, 1981), measured at the time of scanning, was in the average range (FSIQ 102 Five control participants were recruited.…”

“…The visual paired comparison task (VPC) exploits a subject's natural tendency to look preferentially at novel stimuli relative to familiar stimuli. VPC task performance has been found to be sensitive to damage to the hippocampal formation in both amnesic patients (McKee & Squire, 1993;Pascalis et al, 2004) and adult monkeys (Pascalis & Bachevalier, 1999;Zola et al, 2000;Nemanic et al 2004) when increasing delays were used. In the present experiment, we manipulated the backgrounds onto which the objects appeared such that in some trials the backgrounds were identical during familiarization (study) and test, but on other trials they differed between familiarization and test (See Figure 1).…”