Retrograde Amnesia for World Knowledge and Preserved Memory for Autobiographic Events. A Case Report

doi:10.1016/S0010-9452(08)70797-4

Cortex

Volume 35, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 243-252

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-9452(08)70797-4 Get rights and content

Abstract

A patient (PC) with severe and chronic retrograde amnesia for world knowledge (tested with famous events and famous faces), but unimpaired autobiographical memory is described. The 64-year-old man had traumatic brain injury four years prior to the present evaluation. Current brain imaging showed principally damage involving the infero-lateral prefrontal and the lateral temporal regions of the left-hemisphere. PC was of average intelligence, had no depression and only minor language problems, but manifested some additional anterograde memory deficits and performed subaverage in various frontal lobe-sensitive tests. Patient PC represents one of the very few cases with a preserved retrograde episodic and an impaired retrograde knowledge system, showing a dissociation between preserved retrieval of autobiographical events and amnesia for nonpersonal famous events. It is hypothesized that the sparing of autobiographical memories can be linked to the integrity of the right frontal and temporo-polar cortices.

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Autobiographical amnesia is found in patients with focal or diffuse brain damage (“organic amnesia”), but also without overt brain damage (at least when measured with conventional brain imaging methods). This last condition is usually named dissociative amnesia at present, and was originally described as hysteria. Classically and traditionally, dissociative amnesia is seen as a disorder that causes retrograde amnesia in the autobiographical domain in the aftermath of incidents of major psychological stress or trauma. In the present study one of the probably largest published collections of patients (28) with psychogenically caused autobiographical amnesia, who were assessed with comprehensive neuropsychological tests, will be described and documented in order to identify variables which are central for the occurrence of dissociative amnesia. The presented cases demonstrate that autobiographical amnesia without direct brain damage can have very mixed clinical presentations, causes and consequences. The described cases of psychogenic amnesia are clustered according to a number of manifestations and features, which include a reduced effort to perform cognitively at a normal level, a forensic background, anterograde (instead of retrograde) autobiographical amnesia, the fugue condition, concurrent somatic diseases, and their appearance in childhood and youth. It is concluded that autobiographical amnesia of a psychogenic origin may occur within a variety of symptom pictures. For all patients, it probably serves a protective function by offering them a mechanism to exit a life situation which appears to them unmanageable or adverse.
Characterization of a Factual Knowledge–Associated Brain Memory Area by Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Implementation in Tumor and Epilepsy Brain Surgery
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Citation Excerpt :
Grossi et al.9 described a case of traumatic brain injury with loss of semantic capabilities such as geographic knowledge and multiplication. Markowitsch et al.10 also described loss of world knowledge as a result of a traumatic brain injury, although autobiographic memory remained normal. Grewal11 described a left temporolateral infarction exclusively confined to the hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus, which caused severe loss of factual knowledge.
The role of the dominant hippocampus in verbal and episodic memory recall has been extensively investigated. However, there are categories of memory estimated independent of hippocampal function. In particular, factual knowledge is solely constituted from written or spoken input independent on undertaken experience, but the temporal structures involved are not well defined.
In this retrospective study, we mapped the activity of factual knowledge recall using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 60 patients scheduled for tumor or epilepsy surgery and in 18 patients resected within or close to the left mesial temporal lobe. Memory tests were performed preoperatively and postoperatively to investigate deficit symptoms in factual knowledge retrieval.
We found a highly reproducible localized brain area within the parahippocampal gyrus, in the depth of the dorsal collateral sulcus, which was constantly involved in factual knowledge retrieval during fMRI tasks in 93% of patients (56/60) during recall of capital cities or multiplication tasks, in two thirds of the patients mainly on the dominant side. In addition, all 18 patients after surgery within this area showed postoperative factual knowledge deficits (56% permanent, 44% transitory), memory prognosis significantly correlating with the first day's factual knowledge retrieval task results.
Using fMRI, we visualized a circumscribed brain area within the parahippocampal gyrus during factual knowledge retrieval, the lesioning of which led to factual knowledge deficits. Thus, impairment of factual knowledge retrieval may occur if resection is extended into the parahippocampal gyrus. Preoperative fMRI memory maps may contribute to avoiding such deficits.
Déjà vecu for news events but not personal events: A dissociation between autobiographical and non-autobiographical episodic memory processing
2017, Cortex
In déjà vu, the feeling that what we are currently experiencing we have experienced before is fleeting and is not accepted as true. In contrast, in déjà vecu or “recollective confabulation”, the sense of déjà vu is persistent and convincing, and patients genuinely believe that they have lived through the current moment at some previous time. In previous reports of cases of déjà vecu, both personal events and non-personal, world events gave rise to this experience. In this paper we describe a patient whose déjà vecu experiences are entirely restricted to non-personal events, suggesting that autobiographical and non-autobiographical episodic memory processing can dissociate. We suggest that this dissociation is secondary to differences in the degree to which personal and emotional associations are formed for these two different types of event, and offer a two-factor theory of déjà vecu.
Functional (dissociative) retrograde amnesia
2016, Handbook of Clinical Neurology
Citation Excerpt :
Memory problems accompanying stress are consequently a common occurrence (Markowitsch, 1999b, 2006; Lupien and Maheu, 2000; Valentino et al., 2009; Quesada et al., 2012). And, as a number of studies found a functional lateralization, with the right hemisphere processing emotionally laden information and the left one neutral facts (Markowitsch et al., 1999a; Schore, 2002, 2005; Moriguchi et al., 2006; Gregory et al., 2014), it makes sense that functional imaging studies principally confirmed the idea of right-hemispheric episodic-autobiographic memory (see Fink et al., 1996; Markowitsch et al., 2000a, b; LaBar and Cabeza, 2006). A relation to conscious memory suppression has been proposed as well (cf. Kikuchi et al., 2010; Staniloiu and Markowitsch, 2014).
Retrograde amnesia is described as condition which can occur after direct brain damage, but which occurs more frequently as a result of a psychiatric illness. In order to understand the amnesic condition, content-based divisions of memory are defined. The measurement of retrograde memory is discussed and the dichotomy between “organic” and “psychogenic” retrograde amnesia is questioned. Briefly, brain damage-related etiologies of retrograde amnesia are mentioned. The major portion of the review is devoted to dissociative amnesia (also named psychogenic or functional amnesia) and to the discussion of an overlap between psychogenic and “brain organic” forms of amnesia. The “inability of access hypothesis” is proposed to account for most of both the organic and psychogenic (dissociative) patients with primarily retrograde amnesia. Questions such as why recovery from retrograde amnesia can occur in retrograde (dissociative) amnesia, and why long-term new learning of episodic-autobiographic episodes is possible, are addressed. It is concluded that research on retrograde amnesia research is still in its infancy, as the neural correlates of memory storage are still unknown. It is argued that the recollection of episodic-autobiographic episodes most likely involves frontotemporal regions of the right hemisphere, a region which appears to be hypometabolic in patients with dissociative amnesia.
Autobiographical significance in past and future public semantic memory: A case-study
2013, Cortex
Citation Excerpt :
Moreover, a group-study (Barr et al., 1990) reported disproportionate loss of public semantic memory compared with autobiographical episodic memory in left but not in right TLE patients. With regard to non-epileptic patients, only three cases, to our knowledge, inform a similar cognitive profile (De Renzi et al.'s, 1987 ‘semantic amnesic’ herpes encephalitic patient, Markowitsch et al.'s, 1999 left fronto-temporal traumatic brain injury patient, and Yasuda et al.’s, 1997 patient, who underwent treatment for a meningioma). Independently of the aetiology, preserved autobiographical memory together with impaired public semantic memory involved, in every case, damage only or predominantly to the left medial and/or lateral temporal lobe.
Refined investigation of infrequent dissociations within remote memory, such as preservation of autobiographical episodic memory and selective impairment of public semantic memory could provide some insight on the interactions of long-term memory systems and their underlying brain correlates. Combining clinical neuropsychological and neuroimaging methods in the present study, we examined a patient surgically treated for temporal lobe epilepsy showing this rare pattern of dissociation. Specifically, we investigated along the two temporal directions, past and future, his autobiographical episodic memory, semantic memory for public events and famous people and their interaction through the concept of autobiographical significance (AS). The results showed impaired ability not only to recall past but also to imagine future public events in a context of preserved past and future personal episodic memory. Remarkably, impersonal future thinking was impaired regardless of AS, while the autobiographical-significant public past knowledge relied exclusively on the patient's spared autobiographical episodic memory. These results were corroborated by neuroimaging data showing the absence of brain activation for public knowledge devoid of personal significance and activation of the autobiographical memory cerebral network for personally significant public knowledge. Our findings suggest that AS did not ‘restore’ the code to access public semantic memory, but bypassed it by using personal memory sources successful only for past public recollections. Therefore, remembering impersonal and imagining public events seems to require the contribution of public semantic knowledge per se. The patient's cognitive profile suggested a reorganization of memory systems.
Retrograde amnesia with a trip in the past
2012, Annales Medico-Psychologiques
À propos de deux observations singulières de projection dans le passé avec une amnésie rétrograde autobiographique massive de quelques mois, le cadre nosographique de l’amnésie rétrograde fonctionnelle est réabordé : la particularité du stock autobiographique avec son classement temporel, la nature anatomofonctionnelle de la recherche de souvenirs personnels, l’éventualité d’un blocage d’accès volontaire à la trace mnésique et enfin l’irruption de souvenirs si précis qu’ils projettent le sujet dans le passé. Dans l’ictus amnésique, l’amnésie rétrograde massive d’une période de vie limitée peut conduire pendant l’épisode à une projection dans un passé qui une fois l’ictus terminé sera de nouveau oublié. Des souvenirs très précis resurgissent, qui donnent réalité à ce retour en arrière. Dans l’amnésie fonctionnelle, un même phénomène peut se produire durablement. La dichotomie entre amnésies fonctionnelle et organique mérite d’être dépassée à la lumière de ce type d’observations.
About two cases of retrograde amnesia with a total loss of episodic memory several years of life, we describe a singular transfer in the past; we discuss the nosography of functional or dissociative amnesia, the nature of the blockage of retrieval processes and the occurrence of very precise memories which project the patient some years before in his past. This phenomenon has been described in transient global amnesia, especially in those occurring after a small head trauma during sport. It may also occur in dissociative amnesia; these data lead to question the classical dichotomy between organic and functional amnesias.

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Retrograde Amnesia for World Knowledge and Preserved Memory for Autobiographic Events. A Case Report

Abstract

Neuropsychologia

Cortex

Trends in Neurosciences

Neuropsychologia

Cortex

Cortex

Brain Research Reviews

Cortex

Neuropathological changes of the temporal pole in Alzheimer's disease and Pick disease

Archives of Neurology

Right temporofrontal cortex as critical locus for the ecphory of old episodic memories

Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry

Reduzierter Wechsler-Intelligenztest (WIP)

The Token Test: A sensitive test to detect receptive disturbances in aphasics

Brain

Attention: Effects of brain damage

Neurophysiologische und neuropsychologische Korrelate umschriebener Hirnverletzungen

Cerebral representation of one's own past: neural networks involved in autobiographical memory

Journal of Neuroscience

Das Beck-Depressionsinventar in der Klinik

Nervenarzt

Focal retrograde amnesia following bilateral temporal lobe pathology

Brain

Neuroanatomical correlates of encoding in episodic memory: levels of processing effect

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA

The Autobiographical Memory Interview. Bury St

Retrieval of old memories: the temporofrontal hypothesis

Brain