Impairment Of Prospective Memory In Patient With White Matter Ischemic Lesion

Objective To study the impairment of the prospective memory including event-based prospective memory (EBPM) and time-based prospective memory(TBPM) in patients with white matter ischemic lesion.Methods Set a neuropsychological battery to measure EBPM and TBPM in 30 education- and age-matched patients with white matter ischemic lesion (WMIL) and normally aging adults.Results Compared with the healthy controls, WMIL patients demonstrated a selective impairment in their ability to perform TBPM (2.2±1.4,5.0±1.1,t=-8.483,P<0.01), but no group difference in performance on EBPM tasks (4.3±1.6,4.0±1.5, t=0.667, P>0.05). In addition, both the severity of WMIL and extent of impairment in cholinergic pathways by WMIL were negatively correlated to TBPM (r=-0.387,-0.416; both P<0.05).Conclusions WMIL patients demonstrated a selective impairment in TBPM, and the more severe WMIL was, the poorer TBPM impaired. EBPM remains not impaired. The results suggest that TBPM and EBPM may have different neuromechanisms and indicates cholinergic pathways may be the neuromechanism of TBPM.