Morphological and glucose metabolism abnormalities in alcoholic Korsakoff's syndrome: group comparisons and individual analyses.

Background: Gray matter volume studies have been limited to few brain regions of interest, and white matter and glucose metabolism have received limited research attention in Korsakoff's syndrome (KS). Because of the lack of brain biomarkers, KS was found to be underdiagnosed in postmortem studies.

Methodology/principal Findings: Nine consecutively selected patients with KS and 22 matched controls underwent both structural magnetic resonance imaging and (18)F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography examinations.

Age-related changes of phasic heart rate responses to affective pictures.

This study examined age differences in phasic heart rate in response to neutral, negative and positive pictures. Heart rate changes and subjective ratings were analyzed in 22 middle-aged (40-55 years) and 30 older (56-78 years) participants. The effects of valence on the HR pattern across time were similar to that obtained by Bradley and co-workers.

A detrimental effect of emotion on picture recollection.

Several studies indicate that the recollection process, as assessed by the Remember-Know paradigm (Tulving, 1985) is enhanced for emotional stimuli as compared with neutral ones. The goal of this study was to assess the influence of emotion on recollection process, applying the Processes Dissociation Procedure (PDP; Jacoby, 1991) on emotional and neutral pictures. A total of 63 participants (aged 40-78 years) were included in this study, and the PDP was implemented by a list discrimination task.

Voxel-based mapping of brain hypometabolism in permanent amnesia with PET.

In this study, we used voxel-based mapping methods to compare the resting cerebral metabolic rate of glucose (CMRglc) measured with PET in five patients with permanent amnesia (three with chronic Wernicke-Korsakoff and two with postanoxia syndrome) to that of nine healthy age-matched subjects. We assessed (i) a group pattern of relative hypometabolism; and (ii) the consistency of this group pattern, if any, in individual subjects, according to etiology. The results from the group analysis documented that permanent amnesia is associated with hypometabolism in the thalamus, posterior cingulate cortex, and mesial prefrontal cortex (near the anterior cingulate gyrus), bilaterally, as well as in the left supramarginal and middle temporal gyri.

[Function imaging of the hippocampus in Korsakoff's syndrome].

A case of alcoholic Korsakoff syndrome is reported in a 47 year-old-man. Neuropsychological examination revealed an important both anterograd and retrograd amnesia but procedural and short-term memory were not affected nor was intellectual capacity. Cerebral IRM was normal.