Additionally, the study included a category for classifying "bizarre" answers, which included any answer that was far outside of the normal range of expected responses. WKS patients did give answers that could fall into such a category and these included answers such as 15s or 1 hour for the estimated length of a shower, or 4 kg or 15 tonnes as the weight of a car. Memory deficits
As mentioned previously, the amnesic symptoms of WKS include both retrograde and anterograde amnesia. The retrograde deficit has been demonstrated through an inability of WKS patients to recall or recognize information for recent public events. The anterograde memory loss is demonstrated through deficits in tasks that involve encoding and then recalling lists of words and faces, as well as semantic learning tasks. WKS patients have also demonstrated difficulties in perseveration as evidenced by a deficit in performance on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. The retrograde amnesia that accompanies WKS can extend as far back as twenty to thirty years, and there is generally a temporal gradient seen, where earlier memories are recalled better than more recent memories. It has been widely accepted that the critical structures that lead to the memory impairment in WKS are the mammillary bodies, and the thalamic regions. Despite the aforementioned memory deficits, non-declarative memory functions appear to be intact in WKS patients. This has been demonstrated through measures that assess perceptual priming.Other studies have shown deficits in recognition memory and stimulus-reward associative functions in patients with WKS.
At the 13th International Medical Congress in Moscow in 1897, Korsakoff presented a report called: "On a special form of mental illness combined with degenerative polyneuritis". After the presentation of this report the term "Korsakoffs syndrome" was coined.Although WE and AKS were discovered separately, these two syndromes are usually referred to under one name, Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome, due to the fact that they are part of the same cause and because the onset of AKS usually follows WE if left untreated. Society and culture
The British neurologist Oliver Sacks describes case histories of some of his patients with the syndrome in the book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1985).Frontman and lead vocalist of the hard rock band Breaking Benjamin, Benjamin Burnley, is well known to be living with Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome due to his past alcoholism. He has written multiple songs about addiction and his experiences with alcohol, with many of such songs being found on the bands 2009 album Dear Agony as it was the first album Burnley had written and recorded completely sober. See also
Alcoholic dementia
Dementia
Malabsorption

References


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