Brain metabolic dysfunction in Capgras delusion during Alzheimer’s disease: a positron emission tomography study

in American Journal of Alzheimer's Disease & Other Dementias (in press)

Capgras delusion is characterized by the misidentification of people and by the delusional belief that the misidentified persons have been replaced by impostors, generally perceived as persecutors. Since ... [more ▼]

Capgras delusion is characterized by the misidentification of people and by the delusional belief that the misidentified persons have been replaced by impostors, generally perceived as persecutors. Since little is known regarding the neural correlates of Capgras syndrome, the cerebral metabolic pattern of a patient with probable Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Capgras syndrome was compared with those of 24 healthy elderly subjects and 26 AD patients without delusional syndrome. Compared to the healthy and AD groups, the patient had significant hypometabolism in frontal and posterior midline structures. In light of current neural models of face perception, our patient’s Capgras syndrome may be related to impaired recognition of a familiar face, subserved by the posterior cingulate/precuneus cortex, and impaired reflection about personally relevant knowledge related to a face, subserved by the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. [less ▲]

Fonctionnement mnésique et maladie d’Alzheimer

in Lettre des Académies (La) (in press)

Differential effects of aging on the neural correlates of recollection and familiarity

in Cortex : A Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System & Behavior (in press)

The present experiment aimed to investigate age differences in the neural correlates of familiarity and recollection, while keeping performance similar across age groups by varying task difficulty. Twenty ... [more ▼]

The present experiment aimed to investigate age differences in the neural correlates of familiarity and recollection, while keeping performance similar across age groups by varying task difficulty. Twenty young and twenty older adults performed an episodic memory task in an event-related fMRI design. At encoding, participants were presented with pictures, either once or twice. Then, they performed a recognition task, with a Remember/Know paradigm. A similar performance was observed for the two groups in the Easy condition for recollection and in the Hard condition for familiarity. Imaging data revealed the classic recollection-related and familiarity-related networks, common to young and older groups. In addition, we observed that some activity related to recollection (left frontal, left temporal, left parietal cortices and left parahippocampus) and familiarity (bilateral anterior cingulate, right frontal gyrus and left superior temporal gyrus) was reduced in older compared to young adults. However, for recollection processes only, older adults additionally recruited the right precuneus, possibly to successfully compensate for their difficulties, as suggested by a positive correlation between recollection and precuneus activity. [less ▲]

Effects of aging on task- and stimulus-related attention during a short-term memory task

Poster (2013, May 28)

Variabilité inter-individuelle dans le fonctionnement mnésique dans le vieillissement normal et pathologique : Le rôle de la réserve cognitive

Conference (2013, March 20)

The neural correlates of recollection and familiarity during aging

in Journal of Psychophysiology (2013), 27(Suppl 1), 48

The role of memory traces quality in directed forgetting: A comparison of young and elderly participants using the item procedure

Conference (2013)

Le rôle de la qualité de la trace mnésique en oubli dirigé: une comparaison de participants jeunes et âgés lors de la procédure item

Conference (2013)

Associative memory in aging: The effect of unitization on source memory

in Psychology & Aging (2013), 28(1), 275-283

In normal aging, memory for associations declines more than memory for individual items. Unitization is an encoding process defined by creation of a new single entity to represent a new arbitrary ... [more ▼]

In normal aging, memory for associations declines more than memory for individual items. Unitization is an encoding process defined by creation of a new single entity to represent a new arbitrary association. The current study tested the hypothesis that age-related differences in associative memory can be reduced following encoding instructions that promote unitization. In two experiments, groups of 20 young and 20 older participants learned new associations between a word and a background color under two conditions. In the item detail condition, they had to imagine that the item is the same color as the background; an instruction promoting unitization of the associations. In the context detail condition, that did not promote unitization, they had to imagine that the item interacted with another colored object. At test, they had to retrieve the color that was associated to each word (source memory). In both experiments, the results showed an age-related decrement in source memory performance in the context detail but not in the item detail condition. Moreover, Experiment 2 examined receiver operating characteristics in older participants and indicated that familiarity contributed more to source memory performance in the item detail than in the context detail condition. These findings suggest that unitization of new associations can overcome the associative memory deficit observed in aging, at least for item-color associations. [less ▲]

Enhancing the salience of fluency improves recognition memory performance in mild Alzheimer’s disease

in Journal of Alzheimer's Disease [=JAD] (2013), 33

Recognition memory can rely on recollection (recall of the details from the encoding episode) and familiarity (feeling that some information is old without any recollection). In Alzheimer’s disease (AD ... [more ▼]

Recognition memory can rely on recollection (recall of the details from the encoding episode) and familiarity (feeling that some information is old without any recollection). In Alzheimer’s disease (AD), whereas there is a clear deficit of recollection, the evidence regarding familiarity is mixed, with some studies showing preserved familiarity and others reporting impairment. The current study examined whether recognition memory performance can be improved in AD when the use of familiarity is facilitated by the salience of processing fluency due to an earlier encounter with the information. Fifteen AD patients and 16 healthy controls performed a verbal recognition memory task where the salience of fluency was manipulated by means of letters overlap. Studied and unstudied words were constituted of either two separate sets of letters (no-overlap condition, high fluency salience) or the same set of letters (overlap condition, low fluency salience). The results showed that, although performance was globally poorer in AD patients than in the controls, both groups performed significantly better in the no-overlap condition than in the overlap condition. This suggests that AD patients benefited as much as the controls from the salience of fluency. [less ▲]