In 2000 Baddeley proposed the existence of a new component of working memory, the episodic buffer, which should contribute to the on-line maintenance of integrated memory traces. The author assumed that this component should be critical for immediate recall of a short story that exceeds the capacity of the phonological store. Accordingly, patients with Alzheimer&#x2019;s dementia (AD) should suffer of a deficit of the episodic buffer when immediate recall of a short story is impossible. On the other hand, the episodic buffer should be somewhat preserved in such patients when some IR can occur (Baddeley and Wilson, 2002). We adopted this logic for a voxel-based morphometry study. We compared the distribution of grey-matter density of two such groups of AD patients with a group of age-matched controls. We found that both AD groups had a significant atrophy of the left mid-hippocampus; on the other hand, the anterior part of the hippocampus was significantly more atrophic in patients who were also impaired on the immediate prose recall task. Six out of ten patients with no immediate recall were spared at &#x201C;central executive&#x201D; tasks. Taken together our findings suggest that the left anterior hippocampus contributes to the episodic buffer of the revised working memory model. We also suggest that the episodic buffer is somewhat independent from the central executive component of working memory.

M. Berlingeri

G. Bottini

S. Basilico

G. Silani

G. Zanardi

M. Sberna

N. Colombo

R. Sterzi

G. Scialfa

E. Paulesu

Anatomy of the Episodic Buffer: A Voxel-Based Morphometry Study in Patients with Dementia

The term functional amnesia (FA) has been proposed for cases of memory impairment presenting with severe retrograde amnesia in the absence of cerebral injury or history of psychiatric disturbance. Emotional flattening has often been reported alongside FA, however the mechanism of such a modification is unknown. This study aimed to explore the emotional processing in a rare case of a patient with FA complaining of severe emotional flattening.We presented ecological dynamic video stimuli conveying strong peaceful and fearful emotions to the patient and 13 controls. We
then explored their emotional responses considering both conscious emotional judgements and automatic psychophysiological
responses (skin conductance) and facial muscular activity (corrugator supercilii). Both patient P.P. and controls perfectly
recognized the emotions conveyed by the films. However, P.P. failed to showan increased skin conductance and corrugator activity
as found in controls during fearful film extracts compared with peaceful extracts. Taken together, these finding demonstrate the
presence of an emotional deficit, characterized by a failure to generate appropriate somatic responses to positive and negative
stimuli. Although this altered somatic processing did not interfere with PP’s explicit recognition of emotion, it modified his
emotional experience, thereby constituting a possible explanation for his emotional flattening. This study therefore suggests that
FA is not limited to a mnemonic impairment, but is a more complex disorder, involving also the processing of emotionally loaded
experiences.

E. Tramoni

S. Khalfa

O. Felician

A. Trebuchon-Da Fonseca

M. Poncet

M. Ceccaldi

Undifferentiation of Somatic Responses to Emotions in a Case of Functional Amnesia

Growing interest is present in literature on the study of prospective memory functioning in Parkinson&#x2019;s disease (PD). Current data indicate that prospective memory may be impaired in PD and a relationship with general executive dysfunctioning has been suggested. However, although the dopamine dependency of cognitive dysfunction in PD has been widely investigated, poor is known on the dopaminergic modulation of PM. In the present study we explored the effect of acute administration of levodopa on the performance of a PD sample (n = 20) in a time-based prospective memory task. PD patients were evaluated in the morning after a 12-hour therapy wash-out in two experimental conditions: i) after levodopa assumption (&#x201C;on&#x201D;); (ii) without drug administration (&#x201C;off&#x201D;). The experimental task required to execute three uncorrelated actions after 10' for three consecutive trials. Distinct scores for the spontaneous recall of the intention to perform the actions (prospective component) and for the correct execution of the actions (retrospective component) have been computed. Results showed that in the &#x201C;off&#x201D;condition PD patients were selectively impaired on the prospective component of the task. However, L-dopa administration significantly improved PD patients&#x2019; performance actually restoring the prospective memory deficit. These results support a critical role of dopaminergic modulation in prospective memory processes in PD patients, possibly through the replacement of dopamine levels in fronto-striatal pathways.

Alberto Costa

Antonella Peppe

Livia Brusa

Carlo Caltagirone

Ilaria Gatto

Giovanni Augusto Carlesimo

Dopaminergic Modulation of Prospective Memory in Parkinson&#x2019;s Disease

Very few studies have investigated the development of visual search of aligned stimuli in relation to normal reading acquisition and in developmental dyslexia.In this study we used a new computerised experimental task which requires a visuo-motor response (RT) to a target appearing unpredictably in one out of seven different spatial positions on a horizontally aligned array of 18 geometrical figures.The aims of the study were to investigate: (1) the visual scanning development in normal children from pre-school to school age; (2) whether visual scanning performance in kindergarten children could predict reading acquisition; (3) the visual scanning abilities in a group of developmental dyslexic children.The main results were: (1) a significant decrement of RTs with age and a progressive increase of the left-to-right gradient with
reading experience; (2) visual scanning abilities in kindergarten proved to be a good predictor of reading acquisition; (3) dyslexics were slow scanners and did not present the left-to-right strategy typical of normal readers.The results support the hypothesis of a relationship between visual scanning and reading abilities.

G. Ferretti

S. Mazzotti

D. Brizzolara

Visual Scanning and Reading Ability in Normal and Dyslexic Children

This study aims to investigate autonoetic consciousness associated with episodic autobiographical memory in patients who had undergone unilateral medial temporal lobe resection for intractable epilepsy. Autonoetic consciousness, defined as the conscious feeling of mentally travelling back in time to relive a specific event, was assessed using the Remember/Know (R/K) paradigm across different time periods as proposed in the autobiographical memory task developed by Piolino et al. (TEMPau task). Results revealed that the two patient groups (left and right temporal resection) gave reduced sense of reliving (R) responses and more familiarity (K) responses than healthy controls. This poor autonoetic consciousness was highlighted when patients were asked to justify their Remember responses by recalling sensory-perceptive, affective or spatiotemporal specific details across all life periods. These results support the bilateral MTL contribution to episodic autobiographical memory covering the entire lifespan, which is consistent with the multiple trace theory of MTL function [7,9]. This study also demonstrates the bilateral involvement of MTL structures in recalling specific details of personal events characterized by autonoetic consciousness.

M. Noulhiane

P. Piolino

D. Hasboun

S. Clemenceau

M. Baulac

S. Samson

Autonoetic Consciousness in Autobiographical Memories after Medial Temporal Lobe Resection

Recognition memory can be supported by both the assessment of the familiarity of an item and by the recollection of the context in which an item was encountered. The neural substrates of these memory processes are controversial. To address these issues we applied repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over the right and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) of healthy subjects performing a remember/know task. rTMS disrupted familiarity judgments when applied before encoding of stimuli over both right and left DLPFC. rTMS disrupted recollection when applied before encoding of stimuli over the right DLPFC. These findings suggest that the DLPFC plays a critical role in recognition memory based on familiarity as well as recollection.

Patrizia Turriziani

Massimiliano Oliveri

Silvia Salerno

Floriana Costanzo

Giacomo Koch

Recognition Memory and Prefrontal Cortex: Dissociating Recollection and Familiarity Processes Using rTMS

Although the semantic memory impairment has been largely documented in Alzheimer's disease, little is known about semantic memory in the preclinical phase of the disease (Mild Cognitive Impairment). The purpose of this study was to document the nature of semantic breakdown using a battery of tests assessing different aspects of conceptual knowledge: knowledge about common objects, famous people and famous public events. Results indicate that all domains of semantic memory were impaired in MCI individuals but knowledge about famous people and famous events was affected to a greater extent than knowledge about objects. This pattern of results suggests that conceptual entities with distinctive and unique properties may be more prone to semantic breakdown in MCI. In summary, results of this study support the view that genuine semantic deficits are present in MCI. It could be useful to investigate the etiological outcome of patients failing or succeeding at such tests.

Sven Joubert

Olivier Felician

Emmanuel J. Barbeau

Mira Didic

Michel Poncet

Mathieu Ceccaldi

Patterns of Semantic Memory Impairment in Mild Cognitive Impairment

The &#x201C;frontal aging hypothesis&#x201D; predicts that brain senescence affects predominantly the prefrontal regions. Preliminary evidence has recently been gathered in favour of an age-related change in a typically frontal process, i.e. decision making, using the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), but overall findings have been conflicting. Following the traditional scoring method, coupled with a qualitative analysis, in the present study we compared IGT performance of 40 young (mean age: 27.9 &#xb1; 4.7) and 40 old (mean age: 65.4 &#xb1; 8.6) healthy adults and of 18 patients affected by frontal lobe dementia of mild severity (mean age: 65.1 &#xb1; 7.4, mean MMSE score: 24.1 &#xb1; 3.9). Quantitative findings support the notion that decision making ability declines with age; moreover, it approximates the impairment observed in executive dysfunction due to neurodegeneration. Results of the qualitative analysis did not reach statistical significance for the motivational and learning decision making components considered, but approached significance for the attentional component for elderly versus young normals, suggesting a possible decrease in the ability to maintain sustained attention during complex and prolonged tasks as the putative deficit underlying impaired decision making in normal aging.

Valeria Isella

Cristina Mapelli

Nadia Morielli

Oriana Pelati

Massimo Franceschi

Ildebrando Marco Appollonio

Age-Related Quantitative and Qualitative Changes in Decision Making Ability

This study used the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm [34] to investigate the direction and the extent to which emotional valence in semantic word lists influences the formation of false memories (FM). The experimental paradigm consisted of 1) a study phase (learning of neutral and negative lists of words semantically associated to a non-presented critical lure (CL), 2) a free recall phase, and 3) a recognition phase. Participants had to indicate whether the displayed item was &#x22;new&#x22; (new item or non-studied CL) or &#x201C;old&#x201D; (studied list item). CL associated with negative word lists elicited significantly more FM than CL associated with neutral word lists. This finding is in contrast to previous work showing that emotional words elicit fewer FM than neutral words. The results of our study also suggest that valence is capable of influencing emotional memory in terms of encoding and retrieval processes.

Jennifer El Sharkawy

Katarina Groth

C&#xe9;line Vetter

Anna Beraldi

Kristina Fast

False Memories of Emotional and Neutral Words

It has been hypothesized that an internal model is involved in controlling and recognizing one&#x2019;s own actions (action attribution). This results from a comparison process between the predicted sensory feedback of the action and its real sensory consequences. The aim of the present study is to distinguish the respective importance of two action parameters (time and direction) on such an attribution judgment.We used a device that allows introduction of discordance between the movements actually performed and the sensory feedback
displayed on a computer screen. Participants were asked to judge whether they were viewing (1) their own movements, (2) their
own movements modified (spatially or temporally displaced), or (3) those of another agent (i.e, the experimenter). In fact, in all
conditions they were only shown their own movements either unaltered or modified by varying amounts in space or time.Movements were only attributed to another agent when therewas a high spatial discordance between participants&#x2019; hand movements
and sensory feedback. This study is the first to show that the direction of movements is a cardinal feature in action attribution,
whereas temporal properties of movements play a less important role.

C. Farrer

M. Bouchereau

M. Jeannerod

N. Franck

Effect of Distorted Visual Feedback on the Sense of Agency

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