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Lookup NU author(s): Kyriaki Foka, Professor Hamish McAllister-WilliamsORCiD, Dr Peter GallagherORCiD, Dr Tom SmuldersORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Deficits in episodic memory have been reported in various psychiatric conditions, including Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Many widely used episodic memory tests do not have the ability to distinguish between impaired memory of separate components of a real-life event (e.g. what happened, where it happened and when), and impaired binding of such real-life features. To address this issue, a naturalistic, real-world What-Where-When memory task was employed to assess the nature of episodic memory impairments in MDD. A validation study established that the task is sensitive to age-related episodic memory changes, and that intentional encoding does not invalidate the task. The main study then compared the performance of patients with depression and control participants on the intentionally encoded WWW task. Patients with MDD presented an overall episodic memory impairment arising from deficits in object memory and the ability to bind objects to temporal context. Taken together, our study confirms the episodic memory impairment in MDD, by providing evidence of deficient object memory and reduced ability to bind temporal context to objects in patients. Our naturalistic WWW task presents a promising approach for thorough identification of the nature of episodic memory impairments, under a real-world environment, in various conditions, including MDD.
Author(s): Foka K, Hunt H, Constantinescu S, Choudhury T, Walker TJ, Black-Dominique A, Lai D, Bhoopathy R, Sanderson O, Wray L, McAllister-Williams RH, Gallagher P, Smulders TV
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Memory
Year: 2024
Volume: 32
Issue: 7
Pages: 924-934
Online publication date: 07/07/2024
Acceptance date: 17/06/2024
Date deposited: 08/07/2024
ISSN (print): 0965-8211
ISSN (electronic): 1464-0686
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2024.2371110
DOI: 10.1080/09658211.2024.2371110
ePrints DOI: 10.57711/h3gc-7q71
Data Access Statement: The data will be made available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author.
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