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Spatial short-term memory is impaired in dependent betel quid chewers

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Abstract

Rational

Betel quid is regarded as a human carcinogen by the World Health Organization. It remains unknown whether chewing betel quid has a chronic effect on healthy betel quid chewers’ memory.

Objectives

The present study aims to investigate whether chewing betel quid can affect short-term memory (STM).

Methods

Three groups of participants (24 dependent chewers, 24 non-dependent chewers, and 24 non-chewers) were invited to carry out the matrix span task, the object span task, and the digit span task. All span tasks’ results were adopted to assess spatial STM, visual STM, and verbal STM, respectively. Besides, there are three set sizes (small, medium, and large) in each span task.

Results

For the matrix span task, results showed that the dependent chewers had worse performances than the non-dependent chewers and the non-chewers at medium and large set sizes. For the object span task and digit span task, there were no differences in between groups. In each group, recognition performances were worse with the increasing set size and showing successful manipulation of memory load.

Conclusions

The current study provided the first evidence that dependent betel quid chewing can selectively impair spatial STM rather than visual STM and verbal STM. Theoretical and practical implications of this result are discussed.

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Notes

  1. We adopted the papers that described the neural correlates of working memory (WM) (e.g., Eriksson et al. 2015; Wager and Smith 2003) to discuss the neural correlates of STM. In many studies, the terms of STM and WM refer to the similar concept: short-term maintenance of information. For example, Eriksson et al. defined WM as “maintains information in an easily accessible state over brief periods of time (several seconds to minutes)” (p.33), similar to the concept of STM. In Wager and Smith, they included simple storage of information in their meta-analysis. Since these papers adopted a similar concept as STM, these papers should be appropriate for discussing neural correlates of STM. Alternatively, a number of papers have highlighted the distinction between WM and STM (e.g., Kane et al. 2004). The neural correlates of STM and WM might also differ. We thank one anonymous reviewer for this comment.

  2. We thank an anonymous reviewer for this comment.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by NSC- 101-2410-H-040-005-MY2 from the National Science Council.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Chung-Shan Medical University, No.110, Sec. 1, Chien-Kuo N. Road, Taichung, 402, Taiwan

    Meng-Chun Chiu, Bin Shen & Ming-Chou Ho

  2. Department of Psychiatry, Chiayi Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Chiayi, Taiwan

    Shuo-Heng Li

  3. Clinical Psychological Room, Chung-Shan Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan

    Ming-Chou Ho

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  1. Meng-Chun Chiu
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  2. Bin Shen
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Correspondence to Ming-Chou Ho.

Ethics declarations

The process of recruiting participants abided by the regulations set up by the Research Ethics Committee Central Regional Research Ethics Center, Taichung, Taiwan. Informed consent was obtained before the experiment.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Chiu, MC., Shen, B., Li, SH. et al. Spatial short-term memory is impaired in dependent betel quid chewers. Psychopharmacology 233, 2925–2932 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-016-4331-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-016-4331-9

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