Mesial temporal, diencephalic, and striatal contributions to deficits in single word reading, word priming, and recognition memory

Fifty-three volunteer participants were studied with the fade-in task (Oste rgaard, 1998) to measure naming latency, word priming, and recognition-memo ry performance, and with morphometric magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) tech niques to measure volumes of mesial temporal lobe, diencephalic, striatal, and neocortical structures. The relationship between measures of cerebral V olume loss and performance deficits was modeled using simultaneous regressi on analyses in which the behavioral measures were dependent variables. The results suggested that damage in both hippocampal and amygdala/entorhinal a reas as well as damage in the diencephalon and the nucleus accumbens all co ntributed independently to the severity of recognition-memory deficits. Bot h caudate nucleus damage and hippocampal damage contributed independently t o increased naming latency (slowed single-word reading). Finally, only dama ge in the hippocampus appeared to result in decreased word priming. These r esults provide further evidence against the assertion that word priming rep resents a form of memory unaffected by damage to the mesial temporal lobes.