Conversion, dissociative amnesia, and Ganser syndrome in a case of “chameleon” syndrome: Anatomo-functional findings

Magnin, Éloi; Thomas‐Antérion, Catherine; Sylvestre, Géraldine; Haffen, Sophie; Magnin-Feysot, Virgile; Rumbach, L.

doi:10.1080/13554794.2012.732081

Cited by 14 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Apart from retrograde and anterograde amnesia, Mrs. X presented with symptoms suggestive of the Ganser syndrome ( vorbeireden and nichtwissen ; Magnin et al, 2012 ) as well as a conversion disorder, such as diplopia (Pommerenke et al, 2012 ). From a socio-cognitive perspective, we conjecture that social learning and expectancies may have played a role.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards Solving the Riddle of Forgetting in Functional Amnesia: Recent Advances and Current Opinions

Staniloiu¹,

Markowitsch²

2012

Front. Psychology

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Remembering the past is a core feature of human beings, enabling them to maintain a sense of wholeness and identity and preparing them for the demands of the future. Forgetting operates in a dynamic neural connection with remembering, allowing the elimination of unnecessary or irrelevant information overload and decreasing interference. Stress and traumatic experiences could affect this connection, resulting in memory disturbances, such as functional amnesia. An overview of clinical, epidemiological, neuropsychological, and neurobiological aspects of functional amnesia is presented, by preponderantly resorting to own data from patients with functional amnesia. Patients were investigated medically, neuropsychologically, and neuroradiologically. A detailed report of a new case is included to illustrate the challenges posed by making an accurate differential diagnosis of functional amnesia, a condition that may encroach on the boundaries between psychiatry and neurology. Several mechanisms may play a role in “forgetting” in functional amnesia, such as retrieval impairments, consolidating defects, motivated forgetting, deficits in binding and reassembling details of the past, deficits in establishing a first person autonoetic connection with personal events, and loss of information. In a substantial number of patients, we observed a synchronization abnormality between a frontal lobe system, important for autonoetic consciousness, and a temporo-amygdalar system, important for evaluation and emotions, which provides empirical support for an underlying mechanism of dissociation (a failure of integration between cognition and emotion). This observation suggests a mnestic blockade in functional amnesia that is triggered by psychological or environmental stress and is underpinned by a stress hormone mediated synchronization abnormality during retrieval between processing of affect-laden events and fact-processing.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards Solving the Riddle of Forgetting in Functional Amnesia: Recent Advances and Current Opinions

Staniloiu¹,

Markowitsch²

2012

Front. Psychology

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“…Staniloiu and Markowitsch (2014) reviewed functional imaging findings in such patients. Very variable patterns of abnormality have been obtained, including both prefrontal activation and inhibition (Markowitsch, Fink, Thone, Kessler, & Heiss, 1997;Glisky et al, 2004;Piolino et al, 2005;Hennig-Fast et al, 2008;Brand et al, 2009;Kikuchi et al, 2010); temporal lobe changes (Yasuno et al, 2000;Thomas-Antérion, Guedj, Decousus, & Laurent, 2010); posterior cortical changes (Botzung, Denkova, & Manning, 2007;Arzy et al, 2011); or a combination of such findings (Magnin et al, 2014). Brand et al (2009) acknowledged that their finding was not a specific neural correlate of 'dissociative amnesia' but can be seen in other patient groups.…”

Section: An Alternative Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anomalies of Autobiographical Memory

Kopelman

2019

J Int Neuropsychol Soc

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Objectives:In this paper, I review three ‘anomalies’ or disorders in autobiographical memory: neurological retrograde amnesia (RA), spontaneous confabulation, and psychogenic amnesia.Methods:Existing theories are reviewed, their limitations considered, some of my own empirical findings briefly described, and possible interpretations proposed and interspersed with illustrative case-reports.Results:In RA, there may be an important retrieval component to the deficit, and factors at encoding may give rise to the relative preservation of early memories (and the reminiscence bump) which manifests as a temporal gradient. Spontaneous confabulation appears to be associated with a damaged ‘filter’ in orbitofrontal and ventromedial frontal regions. Consistent with this, an empirical study has shown that both the initial severity of confabulation and its subsequent decline are associated with changes in the executive function (especially in cognitive estimate errors) and inversely with the quantity of accurate autobiographical memories retrieved. Psychogenic amnesia can be ‘global’ or ‘situation-specific’. The former is associated with a precipitating stress, depressed mood, and (often) a past history of a transient neurological amnesia. In these circumstances, frontal control mechanisms can inhibit retrieval of autobiographical memories, and even the sense of ‘self’ (identity), while compromised medial temporal function prevents subsequent retrieval of what occurred during a ‘fugue’. An empirical investigation of psychogenic amnesia and some recent imaging studies have provided findings consistent with this view.Conclusions:Taken together, these various observations point to the importance of frontal ‘control’ systems (in interaction with medial temporal/hippocampal systems) in the retrieval and, more particularly, the disrupted retrieval of ‘old’ memories.

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“…Varying patterns of abnormality have been reported in functional imaging studies, including both prefrontal activation and inhibition (Markowitsch et al, 1997;Glisky et al, 2004;Piolino et al, 2005;Hennig-Fast et al, 2008;Brand et al, 2009;Kikuchi et al, 2009), temporal lobe changes (Yasuno et al, 2000;Sellal et al, 2002;Thomas-Artérion et al, 2008), posterior cortical changes (Botzung et al, 2008;Arzy et al, 2011), or a combination of such findings (Magnin et al, 2014; for review, see Staniloiu and Markowitsch, 2014). This variability may reflect differences in the syndromes described, the time-delays until imaging was conducted, and the imaging methods employed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychogenic amnesia: syndromes, outcome, and patterns of retrograde amnesia

Harrison

Johnston

Corno

et al. 2017

Brain

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There are very few case series of patients with acute psychogenic memory loss (also known as dissociative/functional amnesia), and still fewer studies of outcome, or comparisons with neurological memory-disordered patients. Consequently, the literature on psychogenic amnesia is somewhat fragmented and offers little prognostic value for individual patients. In the present study, we reviewed the case records and neuropsychological findings in 53 psychogenic amnesia cases (ratio of 3:1, males:females), in comparison with 21 consecutively recruited neurological memory-disordered patients and 14 healthy control subjects. In particular, we examined the pattern of retrograde amnesia on an assessment of autobiographical memory (the Autobiographical Memory Interview). We found that our patients with psychogenic memory loss fell into four distinct groups, which we categorized as: (i) fugue state; (ii) fugue-to-focal retrograde amnesia; (iii) psychogenic focal retrograde amnesia following a minor neurological episode; and (iv) patients with gaps in their memories. While neurological cases were characterized by relevant neurological symptoms, a history of a past head injury was actually more common in our psychogenic cases (P = 0.012), perhaps reflecting a 'learning episode' predisposing to later psychological amnesia. As anticipated, loss of the sense of personal identity was confined to the psychogenic group. However, clinical depression, family/relationship problems, financial/employment problems, and failure to recognize the family were also statistically more common in that group. The pattern of autobiographical memory loss differed between the psychogenic groups: fugue cases showed a severe and uniform loss of memories for both facts and events across all time periods, whereas the two focal retrograde amnesia groups showed a 'reversed' temporal gradient with relative sparing of recent memories. After 3-6 months, the fugue patients had improved to normal scores for facts and near-normal scores for events. By contrast, the two focal retrograde amnesia groups showed less improvement and continued to show a reversed temporal gradient. In conclusion, the outcome in psychogenic amnesia, particularly those characterized by fugue, is better than generally supposed. Findings are interpreted in terms of Markowitsch's and Kopelman's models of psychogenic amnesia, and with respect to Anderson's neuroimaging findings in memory inhibition.

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Conversion, dissociative amnesia, and Ganser syndrome in a case of “chameleon” syndrome: Anatomo-functional findings

Cited by 14 publications

References 29 publications

Towards Solving the Riddle of Forgetting in Functional Amnesia: Recent Advances and Current Opinions

Towards Solving the Riddle of Forgetting in Functional Amnesia: Recent Advances and Current Opinions

Anomalies of Autobiographical Memory

Psychogenic amnesia: syndromes, outcome, and patterns of retrograde amnesia

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