Abstract
We analyzed the effects of patterns of brain lesions from penetrating head injuries on memory performance in participants of the Vietnam Head Injury Study (Grafman et al., 1988). Classes of lesion patterns were determined by mixture modeling (L. K. Muthén & B. O. Muthén, 1998–2004). Memory performance was assessed for short-term memory (STM), semantic memory, verbal episodic memory, and visual episodic memory. The striking finding was that large STM deficits were observed in all classes of brain-injured individuals, regardless of lesion location pattern. These effects persist despite frequent concomitant effects of depressive symptomatology and substance dependence. Smaller deficits in semantic memory, verbal episodic memory, and visual episodic memory depended on lesion location, in a manner roughly consistent with the existing neuropsychological literature. The theoretical and clinical implications of the striking, seemingly permanent STM deficits in individuals with penetrating head injuries are discussed.
Article PDF
References
Akaike, H. (1987). Factor analysis and AIC. Psychometrika, 52, 317–332.
Albert, M. S., Butters, N., & Levin, J. (1979). Temporal gradients in the retrograde amnesia of patients with alcoholic Korsakoff ’s disease. Archives of Neurology, 36, 211–216.
Anderson, T. W., & Rubin, H. (1956). Statistical inference in factor analysis. In J. Neyman (Ed.), Proceedings of the Third Berkeley Symposium on Mathematical Statistics and Probability (Vol. 5, pp. 111–150). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Beck, A. T., Ward, C. H., Mendelson, M., Mock, J., & Erbaugh, J. (1961). An inventory for measuring depression. Archives of General Psychiatry, 4, 561–571.
Benton, A. L., & Hamsher, K. (1976). Multilingual aphasia examination. Iowa City: University of Iowa.
Buschke, H., & Fuld, P. A. (1974). Evaluating storage, retention, and retrieval in disordered memory and learning. Neurology, 24, 1019–1025.
Chelune, G. J., & Bornstein, R. A. (1988). WMS-R patterns among patients with unilateral lesions. Clinical Neuropsychologist, 2, 121–132.
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Fuster, J. M. (1997). The prefrontal cortex: Anatomy, physiology, and neuropsychology of the frontal lobe (3rd ed.). Philadelphia: Lippincott-Raven.
Gerton, B. K., Brown, T. T., Meyer-Lindenberg, A., Kohn, P., Holt, J. L., Olsen, R. K., & Berman, K. F. (2004). Shared and distinct neurophysiological components of the digits forward and backward tasks as revealed by functional neuroimaging. Neuropsychologia, 42, 1781–1787.
Grafman, J., Jonas, B. S., Martin, A., Salazar, A. M., Weingartner, H., Ludlow, C., et al. (1988). Intellectual function following penetrating head injury in Vietnam veterans. Brain, 111, 169–184.
Herrmann, D. J., Schooler, C., Caplan, L. J., Lipman, P. D., Grafman, J., Schoenbach, C., et al. (2001). The latent structure of memory: A confirmatory factor-analytic study of memory distinctions. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 36, 29–51.
Kane, M. J., Hambrick, D. Z., Tuholski, S. W., Wilhelm, O., Payne, T. W., & Engle, R. W. (2004). The generality of working memory capacity: A latent-variable approach to verbal and visuospatial memory span and reasoning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 189–217.
Kaplan, E., Goodglass, H., & Weintraub, S. (1978). The Boston naming test. Boston: Author.
Kimura, D. (1963). Right temporal-lobe damage: Perception of unfamiliar stimuli after damage. Archives of Neurology, 8, 264–271.
Lee, G. P., Loring, D. W., Smith, J. R., & Flanigin, H. F. (1990). Material specific learning during electrical stimulation of the human hippocampus. Cortex, 26, 433–442.
Lee, G. P., Loring, D. W., & Thompson, J. L. (1989). Construct validity of material-specific memory measures following unilateral temporal lobe ablations. Psychological Assessment, 1, 192–197.
Lezak, M. D. (1983). Neuropsychological assessment (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
Lezak, M. D. (1995). Neuropsychological assessment (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
Milner, B. (1968). Visual recognition and recall after right temporal lobe excision in man. Neuropsychologia, 6, 191–209.
Milner, B. (1971). Interhemispheric differences in the localization of psychological processes in man. British Medical Bulletin, 27, 272–277.
Muthén, B. [O.], & Muthén, L. K. (2000). Integrating person-centered and variable-centered analyses: Growth mixture modeling with latent trajectory classes. Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, 24, 882–891.
Muthén, B. [O.], & Shedden, K. (1999). Finite mixture modeling with mixture outcomes using the EM algorithm. Biometrics, 55, 463–469.
Muthén, L. K., & Muthén, B. O. (1998–2004). Mplus user’s guide: Statistical analysis with latent variables (3rd ed.). Los Angeles: Author.
Salazar, A. M., Grafman, J. H., Vance, S. C., Weingartner, H., Dillon, J. D., & Ludlow, C. (1986). Consciousness and amnesia after penetrating head injury: Neurology and anatomy. Neurology, 36, 178–187.
Sass, K. J., Spencer, D. D., Spencer, S. S., Novelly, R. A., Williamson, P. D., & Mattson, R. H. (1988). Corpus callosotomy for epilepsy. II. Neurologic and neuropsychological outcome. Neurology, 38, 24–28.
Scheibel, R. S., Newsome, M. R., Steinberg, J. L., Pearson, D. A., Rauch, R. A., Mao, H., et al. (2007). Altered brain activation during cognitive control in patients with moderate to severe traumatic brain injury. Neurorehabilitation & Neural Repair, 21, 36–45.
Sclove, S. L. (1987). Application of model-selection criteria to some problems in multivariate analysis. Psychometrika, 52, 333–343.
Smith, M. L., & Bigel, M. G. (2000). The temporal lobes and memory. In F. Boller & J. Grafman (Eds.), Handbook of neuropsychology (2nd ed., pp. 49–65). New York: Elsevier.
Sternberg, S. (1969). Memory-scanning: Mental processes revealed by reaction-time experiments. American Scientist, 57, 421–457.
Wagner, A. D. (2002). Cognitive control and episodic memory: Contributions from prefrontal cortex. In L. R. Squire & D. L. Schacter (Eds.), Neuropsychology of memory (3rd ed., pp. 174–192). New York: Guilford.
Wechsler, D. (1981). WAIS-R manual: Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised. New York: The Psychological Corporation.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This research was supported in part by the Intramural Program of the NIH, National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Vietnam Head Injury Study (VHIS) was supported under Veterans Administration Contract IGA V101 (91) M-79031-2 with the cooperation and support of the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force, and the American Red Cross. C.S., L.J.C., and A.J.R. are affiliated with the Section on Socio-Environmental Studies of the NIMH (NIH); A.M.S. and J.G., with the Cognitive Neuroscience Section of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NIH). The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Navy, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. For further information on VHIS, contact J. Grafman, PhD, Chief, Cognitive Neuroscience Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Building 10, Room 7D43, MSC 1440, Bethesda, MD 20892-1440 (e-mail: grafmanj@ninds.nih.gov).
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Schooler, C., Caplan, L.J., Revell, A.J. et al. Brain lesion and memory functioning: Short-term memory deficit is independent of lesion location. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 15, 521–527 (2008). https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.15.3.521
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.15.3.521