Johnson JM, Fox V. Beyond Thiamine: Treatment for Cognitive Impairment in Korsakoff's Syndrome. Psychosomatics. 2018 Jul-Aug;59(4):311-317. doi: 10.1016/j.psym.2018.03.011. Epub 2018 Mar 27. PMID: 29751937.

Beyond Thiamine: Treatment for Cognitive Impairment in Korsakoff's Syndrome

Arts, N. J., Walvoort, S. J., & Kessels, R. P. (2017). Korsakoff’s syndrome: a critical review. Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment.

Korsakoff's syndrome: a critical review

Wijnen K, Eikelboom WS, Rensen YCM, Janssen GTL, Kessels RPC. Social cognition in Korsakoff's syndrome: A meta-analysis. Addiction. 2025. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.70256

Social cognition in Korsakoff’s syndrome: A meta-analysis

Collection of references for Korsakoff's Syndrome

Iona College

A chronic syndrome characterized by anterograde and retrograde amnesia due to alcoholism, along with other cognitive deficits. It is caused by a lack of thiamine (vitamin B1), which damages neurons. It can also involve deficits in executive functioning, apathy, and social impairments. 

Korsakoff's Syndrome

Acute management for Korsakoff syndrome includes thiamine replacement therapy. Some promising pharmacologic treatments consist of cholinesterase inhibitors like donepezil and memantine to improve cognitive deficits. More long-term treatments consist of a combination of pharmacological treatments and behavioral interventions. Cognitive remediation like visualizing images and verbalizing actions, errorless learning, and external memory-aides have shown to improve memory deficits. 

Korsakoff's Syndrome Treatment

Researchers assessed social cognition in those with Korsakoff’s Syndrome with the HITS model. People with KS performed lower on all three measures of social cognition on perceiving and interpreting emotions, and responding to social information, than controls. 
Those with strictly Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) also show similar deficits in social cognition. However, those with KS exhibit larger effect sizes which may be explained by:

- Those with KS have a more severe drinking history
- Brain damage in the diencephalon due to KS
- Particular social cognitive impairment in KS may be associated with other cognitive impairments in KS like episodic memory and executive function
- Psychiatric commodity in KS like mood and personality disorders may contribute more to social cognitive dysfunction

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