Neuropsychological dissociation between recognition familiarity and perceptual priming in visual long-term memory.

The present study examined whether the same brain region mediates visual-perceptual repetition priming and a familiarity component of visual recognition memory. In two experiments, familiarity-based recognition was measured in an individual (M.S.) with impaired visual repetition priming due to a lesion of right occipital cortex. In both experiments, M.S. demonstrated intact recognition familiarity despite his visual nondeclarative memory impairment. These results converge with other behavioral results to indicate that recognition familiarity does not depend on the same memory system that mediates perceptual priming.