HEAD-INJURY EFFECTS ON A NEW MEASURE OF REMOTE MEMORY - THE FAMOUS TUNES TEST

Objective: To evaluate the Famous Tunes Test (FTT), a new test of remo te memory suitable for use with younger patients. Design: Correlationa l. Setting: university medical center. Patients: 32 patients with clos ed head injuries (CHIs) and 168 healthy controls. Subgroups of control s were matched for age and education with the patients. Intervention: None. Main Outcome Measures: Performance on the FTT, which measures re call and recognition of titles, artists, and year of initial popularit y for 50 well-known songs. Additional measures were the Mini-Mental St ate Exam, the Shipley Vocabulary Scale, and the Galveston Orientation and Amnesia Test. Results: Compared with controls, CHI patients showed longlasting deficits on all measures from the FTT (P < .05) that coul d not be attributed to posttraumatic amnesia or generalized cognitive impairment. Depending on the measure, 53% to 69% of patients scored be low the 5th percentile for controls. Conclusions: The FTT provides a s ensitive method for detecting retrograde amnesia in head-injured patie nts.