Autobiographical memory: a biocultural relais between subject and environment

Dissociative Amnesia with Dissociative Fugue and Psychosis: a Case Report from a 25-Year-Old Ethiopian Woman

Introduction

The case after exposure to intense traumatic events manifests signs and symptoms of dissociative amnesia with a dissociative fugue and schizophrenia. The psychotic symptoms we found, in this case, were very complicated and mimicking primary psychotic disorders. Therefore, this might be a good forum for the scientific world to learn from this case report, how psychotic disorders coexist with dissociative disorders, since the literatures in this area are too rare. Main Symptoms and/or Important Clinical Findings. This case report focuses on the case of dissociative amnesia with dissociative fugue and psychosis in a 25-year-old Ethiopian female who lost her husband and three children at the same time during the nearby ethnic conflict. Associated with amnesia, she lost entire autobiographical information, and she also had psychotic symptoms like delusions and auditory hallucination which is related to the traumatic event she faced. The Main Diagnoses, Therapeutic Interventions, and Outcomes. The diagnosis of dissociative amnesia with a dissociative fugue comorbid with schizophrenia was made, and both pharmacological and psychological interventions were given to the patient. After the intervention, the patient had a slight improvement regarding psychotic symptoms but her memory problem was not restored.

Conclusions

The observation in this case report brings to the fore that individuals with dissociative amnesia with dissociative fugue can have psychotic symptoms, and it takes a longer time to recover from memory disturbances.

A Case of Persistent Generalized Retrograde Autobiographical Amnesia Subsequent to the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011

Functional retrograde autobiographical amnesia is often associated with physical and/or psychological trauma. On 11 March 2011, the largest earthquake on record in Japan took place, and subsequent huge tsunami devastated the Pacific coast of northern Japan. This case report describes a patient suffering from retrograde episodic-autobiographical amnesia for whole life, persisting for even more than five years after the disaster. A Japanese man, presumably in his 40s, got police protection in April 2016 but was unable to respond to question about his own name. He lost all information about his personal identity, and his memory was wholly lost until the disaster on 11 March 2011. He was able to recall his life after the disaster, and semantic memories and social abilities were largely preserved. A medical examination performed on 1 November 2016 verified that he was awake, alert, and oriented to time, place, and person (except for himself). General physical and neurological examinations revealed no pathological findings. He also experienced some symptoms associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), such as intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, and nightmares. No abnormalities were detected by biochemical test and brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Physicians and other professionals who take care of victims of disaster should be aware of dissociative spectrum disorders, such as psychogenic amnesia.

Studies on semantic priming effects in right hemisphere stroke: A systematic review

The role of the right cerebral hemisphere (RH) associated with semantic priming effects (SPEs) must be better understood, since the consequences of RH damage on SPE are not yet well established.

Neural correlates of emotion-cognition interactions: A review of evidence from brain imaging investigations

Complex dynamic behaviour involves reciprocal influences between emotion and cognition. On the one hand, emotion is a “double-edged sword” that may affect various aspects of our cognition and behaviour, by enhancing or hindering them and exerting both transient and long-term influences. On the other hand, emotion processing is also susceptible to cognitive influences, typically exerted in the form of emotion regulation. Noteworthy, both of these reciprocal influences are subjective to individual differences that may affect the way we perceive, experience, and eventually remember emotional experiences, or respond to emotionally challenging situations. Understanding these relationships is critical, as unbalanced emotion–cognition interactions may lead to devastating effects, such as those observed in mood and anxiety disorders. The present review analyses the reciprocal relationships between emotion and cognition, based on evidence derived from brain imaging investigations focusing on three main topics: (1) the impact of emotion on cognition, (2) the impact of cognition on emotion, and (3) the role of individual differences in emotion–cognition interactions. This evidence will be discussed in the context of identifying aspects that are fundamental to understanding the mechanisms underlying emotion–cognition interactions in healthy functioning, and to understanding changes associated with affective disorders.

Brain imaging investigation of the neural correlates of emotional autobiographical recollection

Recollection of emotional autobiographical memories (AMs) is important to healthy cognitive and affective functioning--remembering positive AMs is associated with increased personal well-being and self-esteem, whereas remembering and ruminating on negative AMs may lead to affective disorders. Although significant progress has been made in understanding the brain mechanisms underlying AM retrieval in general, less is known about the effect of emotion on the subjective re-experience of AMs and the associated neural correlates. This is in part due to the fact that, unlike the investigations of the emotion effect on memory for laboratory-based microevents, often times AM studies do not have a clear focus on the emotional aspects of remembering personal events. Here, we present a protocol that allows investigation of the neural correlates of recollecting emotional AMs using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Cues for these memories are collected prior to scanning by means of an autobiographical memory questionnaire (AMQ), therefore allowing for proper selection of emotional AMs based on their phenomenological properties (i.e., intensity, vividness, personal significance). This protocol can be used in healthy and clinical populations alike.

A calendar savant with episodic memory impairments

Patients with memory disorders have severely restricted learning and memory. For instance, patients with anterograde amnesia can learn motor procedures and retain some restricted ability to learn new words and factual information. However, such learning is inflexible and frequently inaccessible to conscious awareness. Here we present a case of patient AC596, a 25-year-old male with severe episodic memory impairments, presumably due to anoxia during a preterm birth. In contrast to his poor episodic memory, he exhibits savant-like memory for calendar information that can be flexibly accessed by day, month, and year cues. He also has the ability to recollect the exact date of a wide range of personal experiences over the past 20 years. The patient appears to supplement his generally poor episodic memory by using memorized calendar information as a retrieval cue for autobiographical events. These findings indicate that islands of preserved memory functioning, such as a highly developed semantic memory system, can exist in individuals with severely impaired episodic memory systems. In this particular case, our patient's memory for dates far outstripped that of normal individuals and served as a keen retrieval cue, allowing him to access information that was otherwise unavailable.