Value-Directed Remembering in Parkinson’s Disease

Poster Session D - Monday, April 15, 2024, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Sheraton Hall ABC

Annie Cooper¹, Alexis Torres¹, Blake Elliott², Samuel McClure¹, Gene Brewer¹, Daniel Peterson¹; ¹Arizona State University, ²Temple University

Value-directed remembering (VDR) paradigms assess the influence of reward on episodic memory, and prior work has demonstrated that source recognition is greater for stimuli associated with high versus low reward. Neuroimaging data (EEG, fMRI, DTI) suggest that the effect of value on memory depends on dopaminergic projections between the midbrain and hippocampus. Our study tests the hypothesis that patients with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) have a diminished effect of value on memory and associated responses in the hippocampus and brain reward system. PD patients were recruited for two experimental sessions, one on levodopa and one after a 12-hour withdrawal from levodopa. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data was collected as patients completed a VDR source recognition task. During the study phase of the task, we presented participants with words to memorize (item) with the location on the screen (source) varying randomly. These words were assigned to one of two conditions: high reward versus low reward. During retrieval, we asked participants to recognize both the item and source information for the presented words. Correctly recognizing a word either earned $1.00 (high reward) or $0.01 (low reward). Participants were instructed to earn as much money as possible. As hypothesized, we found that there was no effect of value on memory performance. Differences in dopaminergic hippocampal activity in levodopa-on and levodopa-off states and its association with motivated memory encoding will be presented along with discussions regarding future research.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic