Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, epilepsy, depression, and head injury are vastly different conditions but one symptom they all share is memory loss. Specifically, all of these patients experience a deficit in episodic memory (EM) - the ability to mentally recall and relive one's own past experiences. New research is investigating how this critical and often compromised ability may actually be tied to other mental activities. For example, it is known that patients unable to remember their past experiences are also unable to imagine their future experiences. It is unclear, however, whether the key role of EM extends into other forms of future-based thinking such as decision-making. Does inability to imagine their own futures mean that such patients are unable to make choices pertaining to their futures? To answer this question we will use established measures for assessing decision-making and compare the performance of individuals with impaired EM with that of healthy, matched controls. These measures represent decision-making in two domains representing facets of everyday decision-making: temporal (how we make decisions across time) and economic (how we make decisions about finances). For the temporal domain, we will test whether episodic memory is needed for the normal tendency to consider different (i.e. abstract or concrete) aspects of a decision depending on how far in the future the outcome is set to occur. For the economic domain, we will test whether episodic memory is needed for the normal tendency to select a smaller, sooner financial gain over a larger, later gain. Findings will have ethical and legal implications on the status of patients with EM loss and limitations they may experience in decision-making. Further, the study aims to inform if and how compensatory rehabilitation strategies may be needed in order for these patients to continue leading, independent lives in which they are able to make healthy decisions for themselves.