Destination Memory in Korsakoff's Syndrome.

BACKGROUND: Context memory, or the ability to remember the context in which an episodic event has occurred (e.g., where and when an event took place), has been found to be compromised in Korsakoff's syndrome. This study examined whether a similar deficit would be observed for destination memory, that is, the ability to remember to whom an information was previously transmitted.

METHODS: Patients with Korsakoff's syndrome and healthy controls were instructed to tell proverbs to pictures of celebrities. In a subsequent recognition test, they had to indicate to which celebrity they had previously told the proverbs. Participants also completed a neuropsychological battery including a binding task in which they were required to associate letters with their correspondent locations to assess context memory.

RESULTS: Results showed worse binding and destination memory in patients with Korsakoff's syndrome than in controls. In the Korsakoff group, destination memory was significantly correlated with and predicted by performances on the binding task.

CONCLUSIONS: The binding process seems to be impaired in Korsakoff's syndrome, a deficit that may account for the destination memory compromise in the syndrome, and probably, for the difficulty to retrieve the "where and when" of an encountered event.