Destination and source memory in Huntington's disease

Destination memory refers to the recall of the destination of previously relayed information, and source memory refers to the recollection of the origin of received information. We compared both memory systems in Huntington's disease (HD) participants. For this, HD participants and healthy adults had to put 12 items in a black or a white box (destination task), and to extract another 12 items from a blue or a red box (source task). Afterwards, they had to decide in which box each item had previously been deposited (destination memory), and from which box each item had previously been extracted (source memory). HD participants showed poorer source as well as destination recall performance than healthy adults in the proposed tasks. Correlation analysis showed that destination recall was significantly correlated with episodic recall in HD participants. Destination memory impairment in HD participants seems to be considerably influenced by their episodic memory performance.