Syndromes of retrograde amnesia: A conceptual and empirical synthesis.

Abstract

This article attempts a synthesis of the range of disorders that have been subsumed under the rubric of retrograde amnesia. At a functional level, it is possible to make distinctions between various forms of retrograde amnesia, including a distinction between episodic amnesia for personally experienced events and semantic retrograde amnesia for components of knowledge, such as those relating to people and events. At an anatomical level, discrete lesions to limbic-diencephalic structures usually result in a limited degree of retrograde amnesia. Marked episodic or marked semantic retrograde amnesia is usually associated with significant involvement of cortical and neocortical structures. Retrograde amnesia is a functionally heterogeneous rather than a unitary phenomenon. Discontinuities and dissociations found in published studies point to the potential fractionation of retrograde amnesia into component disorders, each with its own neural profile.

Visual memory loss and autobiographical amnesia: a case study

“…In this form, though all retrograde memories would be affected, since memories from any age would involve visual information. This pattern of deficits would be exactly opposite to that found in cases of amnesia resulting from MTL damage (Squire, 1992;Kapur, 1997Kapur, , 1999. In practice, patients might be able to retrieve some visual information, so the RA may not be complete; AA might be moderate because an increased reliance on other modalities might never fully compensate for the inability to encode new visual data.…”

“…is similar to other cases of amnesia coupled with visual imagery loss; however, other damaged regions may contribute to his RA. Extensive RA also arises from bilateral thalamic infarction (Hodges & McCarthy, 1993), frontal and fronto-temporal junction damage (Hodges & Gurd, 1994), and temporal pole damage (see Kapur, 1999 andKopelman, 2000 for reviews). While M.S.…”

The loss of episodic memories in retrograde amnesia: single–case and group studies

“…Figure 1 is taken from Kapur (1999) and illustrates further proposed dissociations within autobiographical and semantic remote memory. However, the autobiographical^semantic distinction is by no means clear-cut, perhaps re£ecting the fact that performance on many remote memory tasks involves aspects of both types of memory.…”

Regret as autobiographical memory

“…"s memory for autobiographical events was tested using stimuli from both his academic and autobiographical writings, he showed severe loss of episodic memories for events in his recent past (including his autobiography) with relatively spared recall for semantic knowledge from early adulthood, including scientific definitions previously known to him. Many other cases of temporally graded amnesia are documented (see also reviews by Kapur, 1999;Wheeler & McMillan, 2001) and Conway and Fthenaki (2000) review several studies which show extensive preservation of remote events at the level of lifetime periods and general events but very poor retention of specific events. Cermak (1984) proposed that episodes become de-contextualised over time and result in a semanticised remote past that we "know", and an episodic recent past that we remember.…”