Spatial and temporal order memory in Korsakoff patients

This study directly compared how well Korsakoff patients can process spatial and temporal order information in memory under conditions that included presentation of only a single feature (i.e., temporal or spatial information), combined spatiotemporal presentation, and combined spatiotemporal order recall. Korsakoff patients were found to suffer comparable spatial and temporal order recall deficits. Of interest, recall of a single feature was the same when only spatial or temporal information was presented compared to conditions that included combined spatiotemporal, presentation and recall. In contrast, control participants performed worse when they have to recall both spatial and temporal order compared to when they have to recall only one of these features. These findings together indicate that spatial and temporal information are not automatically integrated. Korsakoff patients have profound problems in coding the feature at hand. Moreover, their lower recall of both features at the same time suggests that Korsakoff patients are impaired in binding different contextual attributes together in memory.