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Differential impairment of spatial location memory in Huntington’s disease
  1. J Brandt,
  2. B Shpritz,
  3. C A Munro,
  4. L Marsh,
  5. A Rosenblatt
  1. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
  1. Correspondence to:
 Dr J Brandt
 Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, 600 N Wolfe Street, Meyer 218, Baltimore, MD 21287–7218, USA; jbrandtjhmi.edu

Abstract

Objective: To determine whether a differential impairment of spatial memory exists in Huntington’s disease (HD).

Methods: Patients with HD and age matched neurologically normal subjects, as well as patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD), learned the locations of nine items on a 3×3 grid over as many as 10 trials. Delayed recall of the items and their spatial locations was tested.

Results: Patient with HD performed worse than normal subjects on all measures, and intermediate between AD and PD patients. However, they were the only subject group in whom delayed recall of spatial locations was poorer than delayed recall of object identity. This effect was independent of the severity of dementia.

Conclusions: HD patients have a differential impairment in memory for object–location information. This finding may relate to the involvement of the caudate nucleus, the primary site of pathology in HD, in corticostriatal circuits linking it with parietal association cortex. It is also consistent with views of the dorsal striatum as responsible for the acquisition over trials of specific place responses.

  • AD, Alzheimer’s disease
  • HD, Huntington’s disease
  • MMSE, Mini-Mental State Examination
  • PD, Parkinson’s disease
  • Huntington’s
  • spatial memory
  • dementia

https://doi.org/10.1136/jnnp.2004.059253

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    Footnotes

    • This research was supported by the following grants from the National Institutes of Health to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine: P01-NS16375 (Huntington’s Disease Research Center), P50-AG05146 (Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center), P50-NS58377 (Parkinson’s Disease Research Center), M01-RR00052 (General Clinical Research Center), and RO1-AG11703 and RO1-AG19825 (Women’s Health and Aging Study).

      This research was supported by the following grants from the National Institutes of Health to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine: P01-NS16375 (Huntington’s Disease Research Center), P50-AG05146 (Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center), P50-NS58377 (Parkinson’s Disease Research Center), M01-RR00052 (General Clinical Research Center), and RO1-AG11703 and RO1-AG19825 (Women’s Health and Aging Study).

    • Competing interests: none declared

      Competing interests: none declared