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The Journal of Neuroscience, August 1, 2000, 20(15):5853-5857
Remote Episodic Memory Deficits in Patients with Unilateral
Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and Excisions
Indre V.
Viskontas1,
Mary Pat
McAndrews1, 2, and
Morris
Moscovitch1
1 Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, and
2 Neuroscience Program, University Health Network, Toronto
Western Hospital, Toronto, Ontario M5T 2S8, Canada
The nature of remote memory impairment in patients with medial
temporal lobe damage is the subject of some debate. While some investigators have found that retrograde amnesia in such patients is
temporally graded, with relative sparing of remote memories (Squire and
Alvarez, 1995), others contend that impairment is of very long duration
and that remote memories are not necessarily spared (Sanders and
Warrington, 1971; Nadel and Moscovitch, 1997). In this study, remote
memory was assessed in 25 patients with unilateral temporal lobe
epilepsy and 22 non-neurologically impaired controls using the
Autobiographical Memory Interview (Kopelman et al., 1989).
Results indicate that patients have impaired personal episodic memory
but intact personal semantic memory. The impairment extends even to the
most remote time periods in early childhood, long before seizure onset
in many patients. As well, patients awaiting temporal lobectomy for
control of seizures perform as poorly as those who have already
undergone resective surgery. These results support the hypothesis that
temporal lobe damage or dysfunction, caused by recurrent seizures or
surgical excision, results in extensive retrograde amnesia for personal
episodic memories. Interestingly, patients with radiological evidence
of hippocampal sclerosis were not significantly more impaired than those without obvious sclerosis. These results indicate that even minimal damage to medial temporal lobes results in significant impairment to autobiographical episodic memory. These findings are more
compatible with a memory loss or retrieval deficit rather than a
consolidation account of remote memory impairment.
Key words:
remote memory; episodic memory; epilepsy; temporal
gradient; multiple trace theory; consolidation; autobiographical
memory
Copyright © 2000 Society for Neuroscience 0270-6474/00/20155853-05$05.00/0
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