Wernicke-Korsakoff’s syndrome (WKS) has been defined as “an abnormal mental state in which memory and learning are affected out of all proportion to other cognitive functions in an otherwise alert and responsive patient” (Victor, Adams, & Collins, 1971). This refers to the dramatic deficits in memory, and the related functions, that WKS patients display whilst maintaining proficient use of most of their other cognitive faculties. Many of the questions surrounding WKS, from as long as 50 years ago, remain. This could be because WKS is a syndrome resultant of numerous symptoms rather than a distinctive condition in it’s own right. This would explain the variety of symptoms that WKS patients may display, as well as the number of brain structures that could be involved. However, there are still some signs and symptoms that seem to have become rather typical of WKS.
Typically, WKS patients are poor at paired-associate and this can be indicative of the anterograde amnesia that is often present in WKS cases (Parkin, Dunn, Lee, Ohara, & Nussbaum, 1993). Paired-Associate learning is where individual is given paired words to learn and is later given on of the words and asked to recall the word it was paired with. An example of a Paired-Associate Learning (Free Recall) task is linked below.
WKS patients often confabulate (Kopelman, 1987) and it occurs when an individual’s memory is so poor that they make up facts to fill in the gaps, genuinely believing what they say as truth (Matthews & McClelland, 2010). The events the individual will describe are often reasonable, they just may not have happened to the individual themselves or just didn’t happen when they thought they did. An example would be a student simply detailing, with absolute sincerity, what lessons they had in school yesterday, but it was the middle of summer and they hadn’t been to school in the last six weeks. Below is a video link that could be useful in further understanding the concept of confabulation and how to manage situations that involve an individual who may be confabulating, as well as other disorders in which it may occur.
TGA was first described by Fisher and Adams (1964), who suggested that it was a ‘…sudden of an anterograde amnesia and confusion that resolved within a few hours’.
This understanding has since been developed to suggest that TGA is often characterised by a sudden onset of both an anterograde and retrograde amnesia and can in fact last up to 24 hours (Portaro, et al., 2018). Whilst it is often associated with an impairment of executive function and recognition during the episode, there tends to be no other neurological deficits or lasting effects following the episode (Lin , Chen, & Fuh, 2014) (Jaffe & Bender, 1966). TGA patients are also more likely to exhibit irritable and anxious behaviour (Serafetinides, 1994).
Neuropsychology 