Source recognition discriminability impairment in Huntington’s versus Alzheimer’s disease: Evidence from the CVLT-3

Abstract

Research suggests that individuals with Huntington’s disease (HD) perform better than individuals with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) on the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT) Yes/No Recognition trial. However, those with HD have been shown to have deficits comparable to those with AD on the Source Recognition Discriminability (RD) index (which assesses the ability to distinguish between List A targets and List B distractors), suggesting that HD may involve selective impairment in aspects of yes/no recognition that rely on source memory. However, whether individuals with HD and AD show comparable deficits on Source RD across stages of dementia severity has not been adequately investigated. We examined performance on the CVLT-3 List A vs. List B RD index in individuals with HD or AD and mild or moderate dementia. Among individuals with mild dementia, scores were higher in the HD versus AD group, whereas among individuals with moderate dementia, scores were comparable between the HD and AD groups; this corresponded to differential performance across dementia stages among individuals with HD, but not AD. The present findings suggest that, relative to AD, HD may be associated with disproportionate decline in aspects of yes/no recognition that rely on source memory.

Keywords:

• Alzheimer’s disease
• California Verbal Learning Test
• Huntington’s disease
• memory deficits
• memory disorder
• recognition

Acknowledgements

We sincerely thank our research assistant, Maiya Larry, for her help with generating scaled scores on CVLT-3 variables of interest in the present study.

Disclosure statement

Dr. Delis is an author of the CVLT and receives royalties for the test. Dr. Bondi receives royalties from Oxford University Press. Dr. Salmon is a consultant for Biogen Inc. and Aptinyx Inc.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health [R01 AG034202 to P.E.G. and R01 AG049810 to M.W.B.], the Shiley-Marcos ADRC [P30 AG062429 to D.P.S.], and the UCSD Huntington’s Disease Society of America (Center of Excellence grant to J.C.B.).