Amnesia, memory and brain systems

Abstract

Bilateral damage to either the medial temporal lobe or the diencephalic midline causes an amnesic syndrome, i.e. a global impairment in the ability to acquire new memories regardless of sensory modality, and a loss of some memories, especially recent ones, from the period before amnesia began. The memory deficit can occur against a background of intact intellectual and perceptual functions. Two themes have been prominent in recent work. First, the amnesic syndrome is narrower than once believed in the sense that a number of learning and memory abilities are preserved (e.g. skill and habit learning, simple forms of conditioning and the phenomenon of priming). Second, the brain system damaged in amnesia has only a temporary role in memory. As time passes after learning, memory is reorganized and consolidated within neocortex, such that eventually medial temporal lobe and diencephalic structures are not needed for storage or retrieval.