A Neural Model of Memory Impairment in Diffuse Cerebral Atrophy | The British Journal of Psychiatry | Cambridge Core (original) (raw)

Article contents

Abstract

Background

Computer-supported neural network models have been subjected to diffuse, progressive deletion of synapses/neurons, to show that modelling cerebral neuropathological changes can predict the pattern of memory degradation in diffuse degenerative processes such as Alzheimer's disease. However, it has been suggested that neural models cannot account for more detailed aspects of memory impairment, such as the relative sparing of remote versus recent memories.

Method

The latter claim is examined from a computational perspective, using a neural associative memory model.

Results

The neural network model not only demonstrates progressive memory deterioration as diffuse network damage occurs, but also exhibits differential sparing of remote versus recent memories.

Conclusions

Our results show that neural models can account for a large variety of experimental phenomena characterising memory degradation in Alzheimer's patients. Specific testable predictions are generated concerning the relation between the neuroanatomical findings and the clinical manifestations of Alzheimer's disease.

Type

Papers

Copyright

Copyright © 1995 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abeles, M., Vaadia, E. & Bergman, H. (1990) Firing patterns of single units in the prefrontal cortex and neural network models. Network, 1, 13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Amit, D. J. (1989) Modeling Brain Function: the World of Attractor Neural Networks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Amit, D. J., Gutfreund, H. & Sompolinsky, H. (1985) Storing infinite numbers of patterns in a spin-glass model of neural networks. Physics Review Letters, 55, 1530–1533.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Beatty, W., Salmon, D. P., Butters, N., et al (1988) Retrograde amnesia in patients with Alzheimer's disease or Huntington's disease. Neurobiology of Aging, 9, 181–186.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Bertoni-Freddari, C., Meier-Ruge, W. & Ulrich, J. (1988) Quantitative morphology of synaptic placticity in the aging brain. Scanning Microscopes, 2, 1027–1034.Google Scholar

Bertoni-Freddari, C., Fattoretti, P., Casoli, T., et al (1990) Morphological adaptive response of the synaptic junctional zones in the human dentate gyrus during aging and Alzheimer's disease. Brain Research, 517, 69–75.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Carrie, J. R. (1993) Evaluation of a neural network model of amnesia in diffuse cerebral atrophy. British Journal of Psychiatry, 163, 217–222.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Dall'Ora, P., DellaSala, S. & Spinnler, H. (1989) Autobiographical memory: its impairment in amnesic syndromes. Cortex, 25, 197–217.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Davies, C. A., Mann, D. M. A., Sumpter, P. Q., et al (1987) A qualitative morphometric analysis of the neuronal and synaptic content of frontal and temporal cortex in patient with Alzheimer's disease. Journal of Neurological Science, 78, 151–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

DeKosky, S. T. & Scheff, S. W. (1990) Synapse loss in frontal cortex biopsies in Alzheimer's disease: correlation with cognitive severity. Annals of Neurology, 27, 457–464.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Drachman, D. A., O'Donnell, B. F., Lew, R. A., et al (1990) The prognosis in Alzheimer's disease. Archives of Neurology, 47, 851–856.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Fuster, J. M. & Jervey, J. P. (1982) Neuronal firing in the inferotemporal cortex of the monkey in a visual memory task. Journal of Neuroscience, 2, 361–375.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Griniasty, M., Tsodyks, M. V. & Amit, D. J. (1993) Conversion of temporal correlations between stimuli to spatial correlations between attractors. Neural Computation, 5, 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Hasselmo, M. E. (1993) Acetylcholine and learning in a cortical associative memory. Neural Computation, 5, 32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Herlitz, A., Lipinska, B. & Backman, L. (1992) Utilization of cognitive support for episodic remembering in Alzheimer's disease. Memory Functioning in Dementia, 73–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Herrmann, M., Ruppin, E. & Usher, M. (1993) A neural model of the dynamic activation of memory. Biological Cybernetics, 68, 455–463.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Hopfield, J. J. (1982) Neural networks and physical systems with emergent collective abilities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, USA, 79, 2554.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Horn, D., Ruppin, E., Usher, M., et al (1993) Neural network modeling of memory deterioration in Alzheimer's disease. Neural Computation, 5, 736–749.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Horn, D., & Ruppin, E., (1994) Compensatory mechanisms in an attractor neural network model of schizophrenia. Neural Computation, in press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Kapur, N., Ellison, D., Smith, M. P., et al (1992) Focal retrograde amnesia following bilateral temporal lobe pathology. Brain, 115, 73–85.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Katzman, R. (1988) Comparison of rate of annual change of mental status score in four independent studies of patients with Alzheimer's disease. Annals of Neurology, 24, 384–389.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Kopelman, M. D. (1985) Rates of forgetting in Alzheimer-type dementia and Korsakoff's syndrome. Neuropsychological 23, 623–638.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Kopelman, M. D. (1989) Remote and autobiographical memory, temporal context memory, and frontal atrophy in Korsafoff and Alzheimer patients. Neuropsychological 27, 437–460.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Kopelman, M. D. (1991) Frontal dysfunction and memory deficits in the alcoholic Korsakoff syndrome and Alzheimer-type dementia. Brain, 114, 117–137.Google ScholarPubMed

Koscielny-Bunde, E. (1990) Effect of damage in neural networks. Journal of Statistical Physics, 58, 1257–1266.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Miyashita, Y. & Chang, H. S. (1988) Neuronal correlate of pictorial short-term memory in the primate temporal cortex. Nature, 331, 68–71.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Parisi, G. & Nicolis, S. (1990) Neural potentials as stimuli for attractor neural networks. Network, 1, 75–88.Google Scholar

Sagar, H. J., Cohen, N. J., Sullivan, E. V., et al (1988) Remote memory function in Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. Brain, 111, 185–206.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Tsodyks, M. V. (1988) Associative memory in asymmetric diluted network with low activity level. Europhys. Letters, 7, 203–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Tsodyks, M. V. & Feigelman, M. V. (1988) The enhanced storage capacity in neural networks with low activity level. Europhys. Letters, 6, 101–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Wood, C. C. (1978) Variations on a theme by Lashley: lesion experiments on the neural model of Anderson, Silverstien, Ritz and Jones. Psychological Review, 85, 582–591.CrossRefGoogle Scholar