Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry

Objectives：Chronic alcohol consumption has been known to result in various neurocognitive deficits. Many neuropsychological studies revealed that the major disturbances occurred in the executive function, learning and short-term memory, visuospatial performance function, perceptuo-motor skills, and abstraction and problem solving abilities. This study was done to identify which cognitive areas might be mainly affected.

Methods：The cognitive disturbance was evaluated using the Korean Version of the Mini Mental State Examination(MMSE- K) and the 7 Minute Screen(7MS) in male inpatients with alcohol dependence(N=31) as well as in age and education level matched healthy male controls(N=30). Four individual tests of the 7MS were consisted of the Benton Temporal Orientation Test, the Enhanced Cued Recall, the Clock Drawing and the Category Fluency.

Results：1) The average scores of four individual test of the 7MS for the alcoholics were 2.77±4.38 for the Benton Temporal Orientation Test, 13.90±2.02 for the Memory Test(the Cued Recall 6.77±1.94, the Uncued Recall 7.10±2.45), 5.84±1.86 for the Clock Drawing, and 12.58±3.29 for the Category Fluency. Except the Benton Temporal Orientation Test, there were statistically significant differences between test scores of alcoholics and those of controls(p<0.01). 2) The alcoholics who had MMSE-K score <24 were 9.68%. The average(±S.D.) score of the MMSE-K for the patient group(27.23±2.62) was significantly(p<0.001) lower than that of the healthy controls(29.20±1.24). There were no statistically significant differences between four individual test scores of the 7MS of alcoholics with the MMSE-K score <24(N=3) and those of alcoholics with the MMSE-K score ≥24(N=28). 3) Four individual test scores of the 7MS seemed to have statistically significant association with such variables as MMSE-K, duration of alcohol drinking, blood magnesium concentration, liver function and thyroid function.

Conclusion：Mild deficits of cognitive areas such as orientation, memory, visuospatial abilities and verbal fluency could be found in alcohol dependence.

Keywords Alcohol dependence;Neurocognitive deficit;The 7 Minute Screen;Executive function;Short-term memory;Visuospatial.