The relationship between semantic and episodic memory: evidence from a case of severe anterograde amnesia

We report a case of a 55-year-old man who experienced severe amnesia after limited damage to the medial temporal lobe following neurosurgical complications. His general cognitive performance and knowledge of new French words and public events that occurred before and after the onset of amnesia were assessed. Performance remained satisfactory on post-morbid vocabulary and public events, with a drop in performance observed for very recent public events only, while knowledge of very recent vocabulary was comparable to that of the control subjects. The implications of these findings for our understanding of the underlying learning mechanisms are discussed. This is the first report of acquisition of consciously accessible postmorbid knowledge of public events in a patient with severe amnesia.PMID:37632139 | DOI:10.1080/02643294.2023.2250532
Source: Cognitive Neuropsychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Source Type: research