Recent reports have suggested that patients with semantic dementia show a loss of early (remote) auto-biographical memories with pronounced sparing of recent memories (Graham & Hodges, 1997; Snowden, Griffiths, & Neary, 1996), i.e., a 'reversed' temporal gradient or 'Ribot effect'. At first sight, these findings suggest that the deficits in 'semantic' dementia go beyond the semantic domain, inv...

It is human nature to think and reflect on our own personal past. Prior to the emergence of psychology as a scientific discipline, the study of personal recollections was conducted in the form of autobiographies, biographies, photography, and the writings of historians and philosophers. Today, through the use of social media networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, our need to record and share e...

BACKGROUND Recurrent brief isolated episodes of amnesia associated with epileptiform discharges on EEG recordings have been interpreted as a distinct entity termed transient epileptic amnesia (TEA). Patients with TEA often complain of autobiographical amnesia for recent and remote events, but show normal anterograde memory. OBJECTIVE To investigate (a) accelerated long term forgetting and (b)...

Sometimes when we unintentionally or intentionally retrieve a memory of a past episode, we experience one or more additional memories, which spring to mind quickly and uncontrollably. For example, one might involuntarily remember seeing mummies in the British Museum, and this memory could in turn trigger a memory of seeing the Egyptian collection at the natural history museum in New York City. ...

Whether or not the hippocampus participates in semantic memory retrieval has been the focus of much debate in the literature. However, few neuroimaging studies have directly compared hippocampal activation during semantic and episodic retrieval tasks that are well matched in all respects other than the source of the retrieved information. In Experiment 1, we compared hippocampal fMRI activation...

Tolving argues that one form of explicit memory, autobiographical memory is uniquely human and has no nonhuman animal antecedents. We suggest that a form of memory used by humans and nonhuman animals, dead reckoning, shares a common limbic structure, including the cingulate cortex and hippocampus, and involves similar processes in recognition of self-action. Thus, it may be homologous to, and a...

We studied the functional anatomy of affect-laden autobiographical memory in normal volunteers. Using H2 15O positron emission tomography (PET), we measured changes in relative regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF). Four rCBF measurements were obtained during three conditions: REST, i.e.,, subjects lay at rest (for control); IMPERSONAL, i.e., subjects listened to sentences containing episodic inf...

I develop a conceptual model of the micro-foundations of routines that incorporates autobiographical memories, defined as the memories people have of their own lives. I argue that individuals ́ autobiographical memories are transformed into collective declarative memory via transactive memory processes, and that the resulting memory systems play a significant role in the development, adaptation ...