Memory for remote events in alcoholics.

Abstract

Alcoholics with drinking histories of 10 yr and nonalcoholic controls were tested for remote memory with a famous faces test, a recall test and a recognition questionnaire. Separate statistical analyses were performed on difficult and easy test items and on the subject''s performance with and without phonemic and semantic cues. The long-term alcoholics were significantly impaired only on difficult recall questions (i.e., items about people and events of transient fame) that dealt with the 1970''s and only when phonemic and semantic cues were not given to aid recall. Alcoholics'' remote memory deficits are not sufficiently severe to account for the extensive retrograde amnesia in patients with alcoholic Korsakoff''s disease. Two separate etiological factors may be responsible for the performance of alcoholic Korsakoff subjects: the impact of prolonged alcohol misuse on anterograde memory processes and the loss of old memories occurring during the Wernicke''s encephalopathy.