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Destination and source memory in Huntington's disease

Mohamad El Haj¹, Marie Caillaud², Christophe Verny^3,4

¹Research Unit on Cognitive and Affective Sciences, Department of Psychology, University of North of France, Lille, France.

Journal of Neuropsychology

|October 11, 2014

Insights

Huntington's disease (HD) patients exhibit deficits in both destination memory and source memory. Destination memory impairment in HD is linked to their overall episodic memory performance.

Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Cognitive Psychology
Neurology

Background:

Destination memory involves recalling where information was sent, while source memory concerns recalling where it originated.
Huntington's disease (HD) is a neurodegenerative disorder affecting cognitive functions, including memory.

Purpose of the Study:

To compare destination and source memory abilities in individuals with Huntington's disease (HD) against healthy adults.
To investigate the relationship between destination memory and episodic memory in HD patients.

Main Methods:

Participants (HD patients and healthy adults) performed destination and source memory tasks involving placing and retrieving items from colored boxes.
Memory recall was assessed by asking participants to identify the correct box for item deposition (destination) and extraction (source).

Main Results:

HD participants demonstrated significantly lower performance in both destination and source memory recall compared to healthy controls.
Destination recall performance in HD patients was found to be significantly correlated with their episodic memory recall.

Conclusions:

Individuals with Huntington's disease exhibit impairments in both destination and source memory.
Episodic memory deficits appear to significantly contribute to destination memory difficulties observed in Huntington's disease.

Read full analysis

Abstract:

Destination memory refers to the recall of the destination of previously relayed information, and source memory refers to the recollection of the origin of received information. We compared both memory systems in Huntington's disease (HD) participants. For this, HD participants and healthy adults had to put 12 items in a black or a white box (destination task), and to extract another 12 items from a blue or a red box (source task). Afterwards, they had to decide in which box each item had previously been deposited (destination memory), and from which box each item had previously been extracted (source memory). HD participants showed poorer source as well as destination recall performance than healthy adults in the proposed tasks. Correlation analysis showed that destination recall was significantly correlated with episodic recall in HD participants. Destination memory impairment in HD participants seems to be considerably influenced by their episodic memory performance.

Keywords:

Huntington's disease destination memory episodic memory executive function source memory

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