Recent reports suggest that some amnesic patients perform relatively normally on forced-choice recognition memory tests. Their preserved performance may reflect the fact that the test relies more heavily on assessments of familiarity, a process that is relatively preserved in these patients, than do other recognition tests such as yes-no tests, which may rely more on recollection. The current s...

Two questions were addressed by the present study. The first was whether the previously reported item recognition deficit which is shown by amnesic patients may be due to a perceptual rather than a memory deficit. To address this question a group of amnesic patients were tested on a 14-choice forced-choice visual item recognition test which included a "simultaneous" condition in which the sampl...

The amnesic patient E.P. has demonstrated normal levels of repetition priming and at-chance recognition performance (S. B. Hamann & L. R. Squire, 1997), suggesting that the sense of familiarity used to make a recognition memory judgment is not based on the same mechanism responsible for repetition priming. However, the recognition tests previously used may have discouraged the use of familiarit...

Background—The cholinergic nucleus basalis (Ch4) is an exclusive site of neurofibrillary degeneration in alcoholic patients with Wernicke’s encephalopathy. Aim—To test the hypothesis that the loss of Ch4 neurons contributes to thememory disorder, KorsakoV’s psychosis, commonly seen in Wernicke’s encephalopathy. Methods—Magnocellular basal forebrain neurons were quantified in alcoholic patients ...

Textbooks divide between human memory systems based on consciousness. Hippocampus is thought to support only conscious encoding, while neocortex supports both conscious and unconscious encoding. We tested whether processing modes, not consciousness, divide between memory systems in three neuroimaging experiments with 11 amnesic patients (mean age=45.55 years, standard deviation=8.74, range=23-6...

Acetaldehyde, the first metabolite of ethanol, has been suggested to be involved in many behavioral effects of ethanol. However, very few studies have been published on the role of acetaldehyde in the amnesic and ataxic effects of ethanol. The aim of the present studies was to compare the profiles of ethanol and acetaldehyde in several behavioral tests, measuring motor coordination, learning an...

We investigated the ability of amnesic patients to learn new facts (e.g., Angel Falls is located in Venezuela) and also to remember where and when the facts were learned (i.e., source memory). To assess the susceptibility of fact and source memory to retrograde amnesia, patients prescribed electroconvulsive therapy were presented facts prior to the first treatment and were tested after their se...

OBJECTIVE This study aimed to resolve discrepant findings in the literature regarding the effects of massed repetition and a single long study presentation on memory in amnesia. METHOD Experiment 1 assessed recognition memory in 9 amnesic patients and 18 controls following presentation of a study list that contained items shown for a single short study presentation, a single long study presen...

The present study compared the recognition memory deficit in different groups of amnesics using scores from a standard test. The data, taken from a literature search, came from 33 studies reporting the performance of amnesic subjects on the recognition memory test (RMT) [77]. A total of 112 amnesic subjects were grouped according to their pathology. In addition, the analysis included subjects w...