Imagining the present: Amnesia may impair descriptions of the present as well as of the future and the past

Zeman, Adam; Beschin, Nicoletta; Dewar, Michaela; Sala, Sergio Della

doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2012.03.008

Cited by 24 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…They also replicate the previous finding of impaired descriptions of pictures in amnesic patients with extra-MTL lesions (Zeman et al, 2013), and suggest that such deficits are not confined to patients with evident extra-amnestic deficits (but see below and Race et al, 2011Race et al, , 2013.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

“…Given that this patient's delayed recall for words and for prose was at floor (0) her spared ability in the aforementioned tasks cannot be accounted for by an overall milder amnesia. Although this parallel sparing of immediate prose recall and picture/imagined scenario description ability in a single patient needs to be treated tentatively, it is in keeping with the hypothesis that description of complex scenarios requires intact/spared episodic buffer function (Zeman et al, 2013).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 62%

“…Such impairment could prevent patients from retaining their recent descriptions, thus hampering their ability to refer back to prior descriptions and construct detailed 'nested' narrative (Romero & Moscovitch, 2012;Zeman et al, 2013). Although we only measured narrative detail, impairment of the episodic buffer could additionally hamper narrative structure by reducing linguistic integration, as shown recently in amnesia (Race, Keane, & Verfaellie, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent work by Zeman, Beschin, Dewar, & Della Sala (2013) challenges this scene construction hypothesis. In their study, amnesic patients produced fewer elements than did controls, both when asked to describe imagined scenarios and when asked to describe drawings or real-life settings that were in full view, i.e.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Visual complexity accentuates picture-description deficit in amnesia.

Dewar¹,

Neroni²,

Zeman³

et al. 2017

Neuropsychology

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Objective: A recent study indicated that amnesic patients have difficulties not only in describing past and imagined scenarios, but also in describing pictures that are in full view. This finding suggests that impaired memory hampers descriptions of scenarios more broadly. However, no such impairment in picture description in amnesic patients was observed in a related study. One key methodological difference between these studies was the complexity of the pictures to be described, hinting that group differences might be marked only if pictures are sufficiently complex to tax aspects of memory. Method: To test this complexity hypothesis, we examined whether differences in picture description between amnesic patients and controls increase with increasing picture complexity. As in previous studies, we also assessed our participants’ ability to describe imagined scenarios. Results: Amnesic patients reported significantly fewer elements than did controls when describing pictures and imagined scenarios. The group difference in picture description was significantly larger for complex than for simple pictures. Conclusion: Although variations in lesion sites might have accounted for the aforementioned cross-study differences in picture description in amnesic patients, our results suggest that, at least in amnesic patients with extramedial temporal lobe lesions, the complexity of pictures can determine whether or not a (substantial) picture-description deficit is observed. We interpret these findings in terms of a narrative-construction deficit. We hypothesize that, whereas brief narrative can be constructed via nonmemory cognitive processes, the construction of more detailed narrative depends upon intact functioning of a temporary memory system, such as the episodic buffer.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 62%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Visual complexity accentuates picture-description deficit in amnesia.

Dewar¹,

Neroni²,

Zeman³

et al. 2017

Neuropsychology

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“…The possibility that anterograde amnesia might directly impair narrative constructions about the past or the future has been considered previously (16)(17)(18)(19). Several observations support this idea.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Autobiographical memory, future imagining, and the medial temporal lobe

Dede

Wixted

Hopkins

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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In two experiments, patients with damage to the medial temporal lobe (MTL) and healthy controls produced detailed autobiographical narratives as they remembered past events (recent and remote) and imagined future events (near and distant). All recent events occurred after the onset of memory impairment. The first experiment aimed to replicate the methods of Race et al.[Race E, Keane MM, Verfaellie M (2011) J Neurosci 31(28):10262-10269]. Transcripts from that study were kindly made available for independent analysis, which largely reproduced the findings from that study. Our patients produced marginally fewer episodic details than controls. Patients from the earlier study were more impaired than our patients. Patients in both groups had difficulty in returning to their narratives after going on tangents, suggesting that anterograde memory impairment may have interfered with narrative construction. In experiment 2, the experimenter used supportive questioning to help keep participants on task and reduce the burden on anterograde memory. This procedure increased the number of details produced by all participants and rescued the performance of our patients for the distant past. Neither of the two patient groups had any special difficulty in producing spatial details. The findings suggest that constructing narratives about the remote past and the future does not depend on MTL structures, except to the extent that anterograde amnesia affects performance. The results further suggest that different findings about the status of autobiographical memory likely depend on differences in the location and extent of brain damage in different patient groups.hippocampus | remote memory | anterograde amnesia E pisodic memory affords the capacity to recollect past events that occurred at a particular time and place (2). In humans, episodic recollection allows for reexperiencing an event through a process of "mental time travel" (3). The hippocampus is known to be important for episodic memory, but its specific contribution is unclear. In one view, the hippocampus is needed for the formation and consolidation of long-term memory for a limited time after learning (4). This view finds support in reports that patients with hippocampal damage were intact at recollecting episodes from early life (and impaired only for more recent time periods) (5-7). Another view holds that episodic memories remain dependent on the hippocampus so long as they persist (8, 9). In support of this idea, patients with hippocampal damage were sometimes impaired at recollecting events from early life (1, 10). A third view follows from the suggestion that the same process that enables recollection of the past is also engaged when imagining the future (11-15). In two studies, patients with hippocampal damage were impaired at imagining new experiences or future events (1, 14, but also see ref.6). This deficit has been proposed to be part of a broader impairment in the ability to construct spatially coherent scenes (15).The present study explored these divergent v...

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