Selective memory loss in aphasics: An insight from pseudo-recurrent connectionist networks

McClelland, McNaughton, O’Reilly [15] suggest that the brain’s way of overcoming catastrophic interference is by means of the hippocampusneocortex separation. French [8] has developed a memory model incorporating this separation into distinct areas, using pseudopatterns [23] to transfer information from one area to the other of the memory. This network gradually produces highly compact representations which, while they ensure efficient processing, are also highly susceptible to damage. Internal representations of categories must reflect the variance within the categories. Because the variance within biological categories is, in general, smaller than that in artificial categories and because memory compaction gradually makes all representations proportionately less distributed, representations of lowvariance biological categories are likely to be the most adversely affected by random damage to the network. This may help explain the selective memory loss in aphasics of natural categories compared to artificial categories.