OSA Associated With Verbal Memory Deficits

[mars]

Hi All

An interesting article from London -

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Obstructive Sleep Apnea Associated With Verbal Memory Deficits

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Apr 02 - Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is associated with verbal, but not visual, memory deficits, U.K. researchers say.

Dr. Gillian L. Twigg from Imperial College Healthcare Sleep Center, Charing Cross Hospital, London, and colleagues compared episodic and semantic memory skills and attention in 60 OSA patients and 60 healthy volunteers.

Episodic memory involves specific events associated with a time and place, such as a first day at work, the authors explain. Semantic memories are not linked to specific times or events. For example, you know the Eiffel Tower is in Paris, but you don't remember when you learned this.

As the investigators reported online March 18th in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, "patients with OSA...displayed reduced performance on verbal episodic memory tasks" compared to controls, "while visual episodic, semantic and working memory remained intact."

OSA patients also tended to perform less well on the tests of verbal fluency, although these differences did not reach statistical significance.

Verbal episodic memory performance correlated poorly with measures of disease severity but showed a significant correlation with years of education, the researchers say.

They suggest that "OSA patients have specific difficulties assimilating and later recalling information presented to them verbally, but have no problems in recalling visual information, and these deficits do not show further decline with increasing disease severity."

Given that memory deficits were not linked with disease severity, they warn that such impairments "may...be observed in patients with mild OSA" and in general "may have significant detrimental effects of daytime functional performance."

American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. 2010.
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cheers

Mars

[kteague]

Just thinking about when I had to see a psych doc for cognitive testing (required by Social Security for determination of disability). In spite of me loosing words, having short term memory loss, and falling asleep repeatedly during verbal testing, I did very well on the part where I had to look at a series of faces, then later in the visit had to look at more and say if they had been in the first set or not. But I would have struggled to tell them the day or date. I wonder if images are stored in a different part of the brain than data, like the folders on my computer... hmmm... wondering if some areas of the brain are more affected but the effects of apnea than another. After my mother's stroke, she lost nearly all ability to formulate words and sentences and speak them, though she could mimic some. However, she could sing old songs perfectly, except in Happy Birthday she skipped the inserted name. Doc said singing is controlled by a different area of the brain. I've always thought visuals increase retention, so it seems to follow that would apply also to those with OSA.

[BlackSpinner]

Just thinking about when I had to see a psych doc for cognitive testing (required by Social Security for determination of disability). In spite of me loosing words, having short term memory loss, and falling asleep repeatedly during verbal testing, I did very well on the part where I had to look at a series of faces, then later in the visit had to look at more and say if they had been in the first set or not. But I would have struggled to tell them the day or date. I wonder if images are stored in a different part of the brain than data, like the folders on my computer... hmmm... wondering if some areas of the brain are more affected but the effects of apnea than another. After my mother's stroke, she lost nearly all ability to formulate words and sentences and speak them, though she could mimic some. However, she could sing old songs perfectly, except in Happy Birthday she skipped the inserted name. Doc said singing is controlled by a different area of the brain. I've always thought visuals increase retention, so it seems to follow that would apply also to those with OSA.

Visual memory would be "Legacy technology" as far as the brain is concerned and probably has lots of redundancy. Verbal memory is something new and special humans do- anything new tends to be a bit more flaky - like walking on our hind legs ....

[Babette]

Very interesting. I've always associated my verbal memory problems with Parkinsons. My grandfather had it, and it's known to skip generations, though I've never been formally diagnosed.

Wonder if it is more related to OSA?

I wonder if visual memory is stimulated by typing and reading things on a computer? I've noticed I can nearly 100% remember names of kids I've typed into a spreadsheet I keep on homeless students (I'm the MV liaison for my school district). But I frequently forget other details. Particularly those that are verbally told to me. I force alot of people to deal with me on email, because I just have trouble retaining verbal information and transmitting it correctly.

Velly intellesting....
Babs

[BigNortherner]

Lack of sleep and stress are very common causes of memory problems.
OSA causes lack of sleep, especially in second half of night.

[dsm]

Mars,

Good article. I would say that it fits myself. Definitely have memory challenges with some short term data.
I laugh it off by saying that my head is so full of facts & data that I have become highly selective about what
I try to remember

But, I can still remember my 1st real girlfriend's phone number from 50 years ago

DSM

[DoriC]

Hi All

An interesting article from London -

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They suggest that "OSA patients have specific difficulties assimilating and later recalling information presented to them verbally, but have no problems in recalling visual information, and these deficits do not show further decline with increasing disease severity."

Mars, That's interesting to me because Mike was just relating a movie he was watching on TV while I was out, all about a police car chase and describing all the action in detail, but couldn't tell me who was in the car and why they were chasing it. I'm sure it's the aging process but OSA probably goes along with it.


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cheers

Mars

[mars]

Mars, That's interesting to me because Mike was just relating a movie he was watching on TV while I was out, all about a police car chase and describing all the action in detail, but couldn't tell me who was in the car and why they were chasing it. I'm sure it's the aging process but OSA probably goes along with it.

Hi Dori

As long as he remembers you

I would love to know what is the residual brain damage I have that is due to OSA, that may improve with cpap treatment, and what is the damage due to ageing, which I cannot see any way of improving. I guess if you throw into the mix being hit on the head with a brick, and drinking to blackout stage for many years, then the question is probably irrelevant.

But ageing, with its problems, is, I have to admit, something I thought would never happen to me - living such a pure life and all

I thought I knew what loss of control was before, but ageing is definitely the real deal.

Postby dsm on 07 Apr 2010, 17:29
Mars,

Good article. I would say that it fits myself. Definitely have memory challenges with some short term data.
I laugh it off by saying that my head is so full of facts & data that I have become highly selective about what
I try to remember

But, I can still remember my 1st real girlfriend's phone number from 50 years ago

DSM

Hi DSM

Did you give her a ring? Just in case.

Back on topic I still cannot understand why I can clearly remember an event of a few seconds that happened 50-60 years ago, yet not remember details of something that took place over hours or days. This remains a mystery.

cheers

Mars

[BlackSpinner]

Back on topic I still cannot understand why I can clearly remember an event of a few seconds that happened 50-60 years ago, yet not remember details of something that took place over hours or days. This remains a mystery.

The brain has to record what happened in such a way that it can retrieve it. The events of 50 years ago were recorded on a nice healthy fresh disc drive with the best working technology and indexed properly so you can retrieve it. It has also been retrieved many times so it will appear at the top of the search engine.

[Babette]

Yeah, I have that mystery memory problem, too. I can clearly remember a dream I had YEARS AGO, that has nothing to do with anything at all, but can't recall where my boss told me he was going to 15 minutes ago.

LOL,
B.

[LinkC]

Maybe it's a function of how much you CARE about each...

My wife and I developed the term "dark period"...as in "That must have been in my dark period" to explain my frequent CRS* episodes.


*Can't Remember...um...STUFF! Yeah, that's it...

[Guest]

Wow! And I've blamed my verbal loses on aging and Lipitor. So very frustrating is this verbal lose.

[-SWS]

Mars: "OSA Associated With Verbal Memory Deficits"

OSA-afflicted Me: <understandably speechless>








j/k

[BigNortherner]

Hey people, IMO that article is far too short to make conclusions from. I presume it’s not our big tongue that makes us less fluent verbally. (I’m only half joking – it is critical in studies to measure and control for if possible a wide range of possible influencing factors.)

I don’t read the short article as clearly differentiating between the effects of loss of sleep and OSA being the specific cause of loss of sleep, nor whether or not they differentiated between persons using CPAP or other effective treatment for OSA and persons without treatment – I’d hope they considered that fundamental in their study.

Keep in mind that someone using effective treatment, as most in this forum are, cannot have much of an effect from OSA because they rarely have much OSA – it is prevented by the treatment. An example of that principle would be high blood pressure – if I take medicine that actually lowers my blood pressure I no longer have high blood pressure thus cannot have the effects of it as long as I keep taking the medicine. (Side effects of the treatment itself is a different subject.)

Someone in this thread indirectly mentioned age affects on memory – age is another factor that should be segregated in such studies, though that reduces the study population.
Some people claim that females and males differ in verbal versus visual ability, though I am skeptical that is another attribute to be recorded in a study and examined, which also reduces the study population since males are more likely to have OSA.

No, I don’t have much confidence in scientific studies on health – too many are too limited – but I have less confidence in media to report comprehensively.

Unfortunately I do not have access to the actual report, only to that widely re-published article.

[BigNortherner]

I wouldn’t be surprised if persons with OSA had memory problems, as it is my understanding that REM sleep helps reinforce memeory, REM sleep usually occurs in the second half of the night, and OSA tends to occur later in the night as the body relaxes.

(Sleep interruption from need to urinate probably also does, as liquid tends to move from lower limbs due horizontal position and relaxation, I suspect waking up with need to urinate may be triggered by an OSA event.)

Stories of having vivid dreams after adopting CPAP treatment seem common, dreaming occurs in REM sleep.