ABSTRACT
Korsakoff patients have been of interest both to investigators concerned with the effects of alcohol on the central nervous system and to theorists of normal memory processes. Memory theorists find the patients interesting because their brain damage results in a total inability to learn and remember any new information. Evidence from investigations of these patients memory deficit has even been cited as being perhaps the most substantial support for the classical theoretical distinction between long- and short-term memories. Alcoholics under the blackout conditions performed analytic tasks on a level comparable to Korsakoffs. Finally, state dependency might well be the result of analysis performed under one state resulting in a type of storage that can only be tapped in the presence of the same stimulus conditions. These, of course, represent only a few of the wide variety of alcoholic conditions that might be investigated using the levels of processing approach.
