Forced-choice recognition in patients with chronic deja vecu
1 : University of St. Andrews
2 : University of Leeds
* : Corresponding author
We have previously reported cases of dementia who present with almost continuous deja vecu - what we have described as recollective confabulation. By our view, these patients have a fronto-temporal deficit by which they misinterpret novelty as a retrieval experience, and in this leads them to experience 'recollection' of the present moment. On formal testing, this pattern is particularly pronounced for ‘novel' low frequency words. In a case series we present 13 patients with dementia who presented with sensations of deja vu and deja vecu, and describe the core features of their experience. In particular, these patients are significantly more likely to assign false positives in yes/no tasks with the experience of recollection. For the first time we present an analysis of forced-choice recognition data, and find that the pattern of responses given by these deja vecu patients is no different from a group of participants with Alzheimer's disease without deja vu and deja vecu experiences. We suggest that intact familiarity processes are sufficient to overcome false sensations of recollection in this group - and this relatively normal performance establishes a boundary around recollective confabulation and its impact on recognition memory.
| Subject : | : | Symposium |
| Topics | : | SY: déjà vu, déjà vecu and other mnesic experiential phenomena |
| PDF version | : |  PDF version |
