Intermittent thiamine deficiency in the rhesus monkey. II. Evidence for memory loss.

Thiamine-deprived rhesus monkeys exhibited a pattern of impairments in spatial-reversal learning and in recognition of highly familiar items reminiscent of certain memory deficits shown by Wernicke-Korsakoff patients. Postmortem examination in these experimental animals showed neuronal degeneration in the basal ganglia, the parafascicular nucleus of the thalamus, and discrete nuclei of the brainstem and cerebellum. No abnormalities were found in the mammillary bodies and mediodorsal nucleus of the thalamus, structures that have been incriminated in the genesis of the memory impairment of the Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome of man.