Alcohol, thiamin deficiency, and neuropsychological disorders

In this paper, two of the major themes in contemporary neuropsychological research are reviewed. These are the nature of cognitive impairment observed in alcohol related brain injury, and the cause or causes of alcohol related brain injury. Two experiments are briefly reported which address these issues. The first experiment concerns the nature of abilities which are involved in a test of memory (delayed matching to sample), which is fundamental to current experimental models of human amnesia. The second experiment involves preliminary data from a randomised, double-blind, multi-dose trial of intra-muscular thiamin for the treatment of alcohol related brain injury, in alcohol dependent subjects who do not show any overt signs of Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome.