A retroactive spatial cue improved VSTM capacity in mild cognitive impairment and medial temporal lobe amnesia but not in healthy older adults

作者：Newsome Rachel N; Duarte Audrey; Pun Carson; Smith Victoria M; Ferber Susanne; Barense Morgan D

来源：Neuropsychologia, 2015, 77: 148-157.

DOI：10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.08.017

• Attention
• Mild cognitive impairment (MCI)
• Aging
• Visual short-term memory
• Medial temporal lobe (MTL)
• Amnesia
• Interference
• Retrocue
• change detection
• Binding

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) is a vital cognitive ability, connecting visual input with conscious awareness. VSTM performance declines with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and medial temporal lobe (MTL) amnesia. Many studies have shown that providing a spatial retrospective cue ("retrocue") improves VSTM capacity estimates for healthy young adults. However, one study has demonstrated that older adults are unable to use a retrocue to inhibit irrelevant items from memory. It is unknown whether patients with MCI and MTL amnesia will be able to use a retrocue to benefit their memory. We administered a retrocue and a baseline (simultaneous cue, "simucue") task to young adults, older adults, MCI patients, and MTL cases. Consistent with previous findings, young adults showed a retrocue benefit, whereas healthy older adults did not. In contrast, both MCI patients and MTL cases showed a retrocue benefit - the use of a retrocue brought patient performance up to the level of age-matched controls. We speculate that the patients were able to use the spatial information from the retrocue to reduce interference and facilitate binding items to their locations.

• 出版日期2015-10