Long Term Objectives 1. To define and understand confabulation as it relates to residual memory impairments preceded by chronic alcoholism in order to refine objective ways of looking at and assessing alcoholism-related cognitive impairments. 2. To identify neuroanatomical substrates damaged in chronic alcoholism and to gain an understanding of how they relate to confabulation and memory impairments.
Specific Aims 1. To compare alcoholic patients (with and without Korsakoff's syndrome) with other neurological groups (patients with Parkinson's disease, damage of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, or anterior communicating artery aneurysm disease), and non-alcoholic neurologically intact controls on tests of source memory and frontal lobe function. In doing so, we hope to gain an understanding of how confabulation relates to source memory and frontal system dysfunction, and how frontal dysfunction and source memory impairments can be used to identify and understand confabulation. 2. To examine the same patient groups tin Object Alternation and procedural memory tasks in order to differentiate the effects of basal ganglia vs. limbic system damage. All subjects will be assessed for frontal lobe, basal ganglia, and limbic system integrity. Fifteen participants in each group will be tested using the Autobiographical Memory Inventory, a Life Events test, a Mirror Tracing task, an Object Alternation task, a verbal fluency task (FAS), and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test.
