How can be best explain retrograde amnesia in human memory disorder?

Behavioral, neurological, and psychiatric frailty of autobiographical memory

Autobiographical-episodic memory is considered to be the most complex of the five long-term memory systems. It is autonoetic, which means, self-reflective, relies on emotional colorization, and needs the features of place and time; it allows mental time traveling. Compared to the other four long-term memory systems-procedural memory, priming, perceptual, and semantic memory-it develops the latest in phylogeny and ontogeny, and is the most vulnerable of the five systems, being easily impaired by brain damage and psychiatric disorders. Furthermore, it is characterized by its fragility and proneness to distortion due to environmental influences and subsequent information. On the brain level, a distinction has to be made between memory encoding and consolidating, memory storage, and memory retrieval. For encoding, structures of the limbic system, with the hippocampus in its center, are crucial, for storage of widespread cortical networks, and for retrieval again a distributed recollection network, in which the prefrontal cortex plays a crucial role, is engaged. Brain damage and psychiatric diseases can lead to what is called "focal retrograde amnesia." In this context, the clinical picture of dissociative or functional or psychogenic amnesia is central, as it may result in autobiographical-emotional amnesia of the total past with the consequence of an impairment of the self as well. The social environment therefore can have a major impact on the brain and on autobiographical-episodic memory processing. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Memory.

Neural correlates of context memory with real-world events

There has been little evidence for the difference in the retrieval processes of when and where something happened, one of the important factors in understanding episodic memory. We used positron emission tomography (PET) to identify the neural networks associated with temporal and spatial context memory of events experienced under experimental conditions similar to those of everyday life. Before PET, subjects experienced 36 events. The events were divided into four groups of nine each. The subjects experienced the first two groups of events before a 15-min recess and the other two after the recess; they experienced the first and last groups of events in one room, took a recess in another room, and experienced the second and third groups in a different room. During PET, the subjects were scanned under three different retrieval tasks: a time-retrieval task, a place-retrieval task, and a simple recognition task. The results showed that the retrieval of time and space, compared with the simple recognition, was associated with activity in substantially different regions as well as a common region: time retrieval with the posterior part of the right orbitofrontal cortex and left inferior parietal lobule, place retrieval with two regions in right parietal association cortex, right posterior cingulate gyrus, left precentral gyrus, and right cerebellum, and both with the right inferior frontal gyrus. These findings indicate that there are unique areas, in addition to a common area, for retrieving temporal and spatial context.

Preserved ability to recognize keywords related to remote events in the absence of retrieval of relevant knowledge: a case of postencephalitic amnesia

We describe a case of severe anterograde and retrograde amnesia resulting from herpes simplex encephalitis. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed pathological changes in the bilateral hippocampi, parahippocampal gyri, fusiform gyri, medial temporal poles, posterior part of the cingulate gyri, and insula. The patient showed severe amnesia for autobiographical episodic memory in relation to events that had occurred throughout her life, but temporally graded amnesia for autobiographical semantic memory, and severe amnesia without a temporal gradient for public events and famous people. However, using a multiple-choice method, she showed a high level of accuracy when choosing keywords related to public or personal events, although this did not prompt her recollection of the events. An important indication of these results is that, even with severe retrograde amnesia, memories of past events are not completely lost. We propose that an event may be stored in a fragmented form, consisting of many components, and that normal recall of an event may require recombination or reconstruction of these components.

Encoding-related brain activity during deep processing of verbal materials: a PET study

The recent advent of neuroimaging techniques provides an opportunity to examine brain regions related to a specific memory process such as episodic memory encoding. There is, however, a possibility that areas active during an assumed episodic memory encoding task, compared with a control task, involve not only areas directly relevant to episodic memory encoding processes but also areas associated with other cognitive processes for on-line information. We used positron emission tomography (PET) to differentiate these two kinds of regions. Normal volunteers were engaged in deep (semantic) or shallow (phonological) processing of new or repeated words during PET. Results showed that deep processing, compared with shallow processing, resulted in significantly better recognition performance and that this effect was associated with activation of various brain areas. Further analyses revealed that there were regions directly relevant to episodic memory encoding in the anterior part of the parahippocampal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, supramarginal gyrus, anterior cingulate gyrus, and medial frontal lobe in the left hemisphere. Our results demonstrated that several regions, including the medial temporal lobe, play a role in episodic memory encoding.

Pure retrograde amnesia following a mild head trauma: a neuropsychological and metabolic study

After a minor closed head injury, a 33-year-old man acquired extensive retrograde amnesia (RA) covering the previous ten years and concerning autobiographical, semantic and procedural memories. The patient's learning abilities remained excellent and he recovered considerable information from his wife, the media and personal documents. This relearned information did not, however, provide a sense of personal experience in the first weeks. CT and MRI failed to show brain damage, but EEG and SPECT examination showed a marked right temporal dysfunction. After three months the patient had almost completely recovered from RA. Interestingly, a parallel recovery was observed in the second SPECT obtained at this period. There was clearly a blockade of retrieval, while the stored engrams were probably intact. The mechanisms underlying such a functional amnesia are discussed in the light of previous reports of amnesia without brain lesions.

Prolonged reversible amnesia: A case report

A 55-year-old woman sustained an acute amnesia that lasted for 8 days. The results of a cerebral magnetic resonance imaging scan and an electroencephalogram were normal. A Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised (WMS-R) test performed 6 days after the event showed global impairment in every domain, except for attention/concentration. A single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) scan taken 8 days after the event showed hypoperfusion in the left temporal and frontal areas. The results of a follow-up SPECT scan on the 40th day after the episode were normal. A second WMS-R test showed some improvement on the 40th day after the event and considerable improvement on the 176th day. The clinical feature of the patient meets the criteria of transient global amnesia (TGA), except for her protracted course. It was not amnesic stroke, however, because of its reversibility and because there were no accompanying neurological signs. This case raises some implications of the pathogenesis of TGA and the clinical applicability of research criteria.

Disproportionate retrograde amnesia in a patient with herpes simplex encephalitis

We describe a patient who developed a severe but temporally limited retrograde amnesia coupled with a relatively mild anterograde amnesia following herpes simplex encephalitis. The patient showed a profound retrograde amnesia for autobiographical events extending for about 10 years prior to the disease onset. Her knowledge about public events and famous persons was also impaired for this period. An MRI and SPECT demonstrated bilateral medial temporal pathology. This case represents a further instance of a relatively focal retrograde amnesia following brain damage. We review other reported cases with focal retrograde amnesia and consider theoretical and neuroanatomical accounts for the present case. Two factors may account for her amnesic patterns: a partial disruption of the store for premorbid binding codes (i.e., information that multimodal feature representations occurred synchronously); along with a relative preservation of the encoding process required to develop new synchronous codes.

Retrograde amnesia: clinical and methodological caveats

Several clinical and methodological caveats are outlined as they pertain to retrograde amnesia research, and data relevant to these caveats are presented. Three caveats in particular are noted in relation to recently published cases of marked retrograde amnesia; (i) temporal lobe epilepsy may influence memory for news events; (ii) there may be additional, unsuspected pathology in cases of amnesia, such as those with cerebral hypoxia; (iii) degree of media exposure is closely related to performance on the types of news events memory tests that are commonly used in retrograde amnesia research.

Visual memory-deficit amnesia: a distinct amnesic presentation and etiology

We describe a form of amnesia, which we have called visual memory-deficit amnesia, that is caused by damage to areas of the visual system that store visual information. Because it is caused by a deficit in access to stored visual material and not by an impaired ability to encode or retrieve new material, it has the otherwise infrequent properties of a more severe retrograde than anterograde amnesia with no temporal gradient in the retrograde amnesia. Of the 11 cases of long-term visual memory loss found in the literature, all had amnesia extending beyond a loss of visual memory, often including a near total loss of pretraumatic episodic memory. Of the 6 cases in which both the severity of retrograde and anterograde amnesia and the temporal gradient of the retrograde amnesia were noted, 4 had a more severe retrograde amnesia with no temporal gradient and 2 had a less severe retrograde amnesia with a temporal gradient.

Memory consolidation, retrograde amnesia and the hippocampal complex

Results from recent studies of retrograde amnesia following damage to the hippocampal complex of human and non-human subjects have shown that retrograde amnesia is extensive and can encompass much of a subject's lifetime; the degree of loss may depend upon the type of memory assessed. These and other findings suggest that the hippocampal formation and related structures are involved in certain forms of memory (e.g. autobiographical episodic and spatial memory) for as long as they exist and contribute to the transformation and stabilization of other forms of memory stored elsewhere in the brain.