Processing and short-term retention of relational information in amnesia

Neuropsychologia. 2004;42(4):497-511. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2003.08.011.

Abstract

In a recent eye-movement study [Psychol. Sci. 11 (2000) 454], amnesic patients failed selectively to exhibit long-term effects of memory for the relations among the constituent elements of scenes. This failure could be due to a deficit specifically in long-term relational memory, as we have suggested; or in retention of relational information over any delay, whether involving perceptual processing and short-term maintenance or long-term memory, consistent with suggestions from recent studies of the hippocampus; or in on-line processing of relational information, as would occur in perceptual or feature binding. Here we show robust eye-movement effects of relations among elements of scenes in amnesia in a short-delay matching task, with the same materials and in the same amnesic patients in which long-delay conditions elicited failure. These findings document intact processing and short-term retention of relational information in amnesia, indicating that amnesia associated with hippocampal damage results in a relational memory deficit, specifically of long-term memory.

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Amnesia / physiopathology*
  • Amnesia / psychology
  • Brain / physiopathology*
  • Color Perception
  • Eye Movements*
  • Hippocampus / physiopathology
  • Humans
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging
  • Memory
  • Memory, Short-Term
  • Photic Stimulation
  • Retention, Psychology*
  • Visual Perception