Similar to persisting executive dysfunctions, cross-sectional studies report episodic memory deficits a few months to one year after drinking cessation (Munro et al., 2000; Parsons et al., 1990; Rosenbloom et al., 2005) and even after several years of sobriety (Brandt et al., 1983) in AUD patients relative to healthy controls. Short-term retention of verbal and nonverbal information was better in individuals with prolonged (5+ years) abstinence, compared with individuals with shorter durations of abstinence (Brandt et al., 1983); however, learning novel pairs of numbers and symbols was still impaired. By contrast, other studies reported improvement in episodic memory after several years of abstinence in AUD patients, who achieved then comparable performance to those of healthy controls (Fein et al., 2006; Reed et al., 1992; Rourke and Grant, 1999). Even in alcoholic patients with at least 6 months of sobriety, a longitudinal study showed normal levels of episodic memory performance when assessed with a selective reminding list learning test (Pitel et al., 2009). Although there is evidence for recovery in selective episodic memory processes such as list learning, other component episodic
