I cannot remember,but I know my past events: remembering and knowing in a patient with amnesic syndrome

Case Y.K. has severe anterograde amnesia and a selective loss of specific personal episodes in his remote memories (Hirano & Noguchi, 1998). In this paper, we attempted to analyze remembering (R) and knowing (K) responses, that is, the relationship between autobiographical remembering and remembering accompanied by subjective experience. Although the rate of R responses was significantly higher than that of K responses in control subjects, Y.K.'s R responses were rare in all subtypes of remote memories. Based on these results, we conclude that Y.K.'s memories on autobiographical incident task were not based on episodic memory but rather on semantic memory. Thus, the autobiographical incidents he could recall were not episodic memory, and his semantic memory made him recall information as fact rather than episode.     

Features of Successful and Unsuccessful Collaborative Memory Conversations in Long‐Married Couples

While we often engage in conversational reminiscing with loved ones, the effects of these conversations on our memory performance remain poorly understood. On the one hand, Wegner's transactive memory theory predicts that intimate groups experience benefits from remembering together. On the other hand, research on collaborative recall has shown costs of shared remembering in groups of strangers—at least in terms of number of items recalled—and even in intimate groups there is heterogeneity in outcomes. In the current research, we studied the effects of particular communicative features in determining the outcomes of collaborative recall in intimate groups. We tested 39 older, long‐married couples. They completed a non‐personal recall task (name all the countries in Europe) and a personal recall task (name all your mutual friends), both separately and together. When they collaborated, we recorded their conversation. We coded for specific “communication variables” and obtained measures of “conversational style.” Overall, we found two clusters of communication variables positively associated with collaborative success: (a) cuing each other, responding to cues, and repeating each other; and (b) making positive statements about memory performance and persisting with the task. A negative cluster of behaviors—correcting each other, having uneven expertise, and strategy disagreements—was associated with less interactive, more “monologue” style of collaboration, but not with overall recall performance. We discuss our results in terms of the importance of different conversational processes in driving the heterogeneous outcomes of group remembering in intimate groups, suggesting that a focus on recall output alone limits our understanding of conversational remembering.     

Erwin Gustav Niessl von Mayendorf and his impact on the conceptional history of aphasia

Throughout his life Erwin Gustav Niessl von Mayendorf (1873 -?1943) dealt with aphasia, yet so far his studies have been neglected in the historiography of the illness. Niessl followed a unique approach which stood in contrast to both theories that dominated discussion in the first half of the 20th century -?locationalism and antilocationalism. This may help explain why he fell prey to oblivion. Yet in fact it is worthwhile remembering his studies, in particular since they might enrich present-day discussions. Although supporting the notion that centres where signals and stimuli are perceived could be located in the brain, he strongly rejected the localisation of cognitive processes. For him these were the result of association. Furthermore Niessl stressed the role of the non-dominant and hence untrained right hemisphere for aphasic symptoms standing in to replace the injured or destroyed left one -?a fact that now may be found from recently published fMRI trials.     

Memory,Narrative, and the Consequences

Drawing on papers from three different areas — evolutionary psychology, developmental psychology, sociolinguistics analysis — this commentary states that there is by now an empirically grounded and theoretically reflected memory research that has begun to break with the traditional individual‐centric orientation of the memory sciences. This break, it is argued, is the consequence of a new interest in the dialectics between memory and language, between social (or collective or collaborative) remembering and narrative. On this view, memory is taken less as a substance and more as a set of practices, of intersubjective and interpretive acts of a remembering subject.     

Prospective memory functioning in people with and without brain injury.

Prospective remembering has been relatively underinvestigated in neurological patients. This paper describes a group study in which the prospective memory performance of 36 people with brain injury and 28 control participants is compared. We used a new instrument, the Cambridge Behaviour Prospective Memory Test (CBPMT) to assess prospective memory. This comprises 4 time-based and 4 event-based tasks. Participants were allowed to take notes to help them remember the tasks. The relationships between CBPMT scores, scores on formal tests and subjective reports on memory, attention and executive functioning were analyzed. The key findings were that (1) note-taking significantly benefited prospective memory performance, (2) significant relationships were found between scores on the prospective memory test and scores on tests of memory and executive functions, and (3) participants had more difficulty with the time-based than with the event-based prospective memory tasks. The results suggest that compensatory strategies improve prospective memory functioning; memory for content as well as attention and executive functioning processes are involved in prospective memory; and that time-based tasks are more difficult than event-based tasks because they place higher demands on inhibitory control mechanisms. Discussion focuses on the implications of these results for neuropsychological assessment and rehabilitation.     

Smaller hippocampal subfield volumes predict verbal associative memory in pediatric brain tumor survivors

The developing hippocampus is highly sensitive to chemotherapy and cranial radiation treatments for pediatric cancers, yet little is known about the effects that cancer treatents have on specific hippocampal subfields. Here, we examined hippocampal subfield volumes in 29 pediatric brain tumor survivors treated with cranial radiation and chemotherapy, and 30 healthy developing children and adolescents. We also examined associations between hippocampal subfield volumes and short‐term verbal memory. Hippocampal subfields (Cornus Ammonis (CA) 1, CA2‐3, dentate gyrus (DG)‐CA4, stratum radiatum—lacunosum—moleculare, and subiculum) were segmented using the Multiple Automatically Generated Templates for Different Brains automated segmentation algorithm. Neuropsychological assessment of short‐term verbal associative memory was performed in a subset of brain tumor survivors (N = 11) and typically developing children (N = 16), using the Children's Memory Scale or Wechsler's Memory Scale—third edition. Repeated measures analysis of variance showed that pediatric brain tumor survivors had significantly smaller DG‐CA4, CA1, CA2‐3, and stratum radiatum‐lacunosum‐moleculare volumes compared with typically developing children. Verbal memory performance was positively related to DG‐CA4, CA1, and stratum radiatum‐lacunosum‐moleculare volumes in pediatric brain tumor survivors. Unlike the brain tumor survivors, there were no associations between subfield volumes and memory in typically developing children and adolescents. These data suggest that specific subfields of the hippocampus may be vulnerable to brain cancer treatments, and may contribute to impaired episodic memory following brain cancer treatment in childhood.     

Explaining how brain stimulation can evoke memories

An unexplained phenomenon in neuroscience is the discovery that electrical stimulation in temporal neocortex can cause neurosurgical patients to spontaneously experience memory retrieval. Here we provide the first detailed examination of the neural basis of stimulation-induced memory retrieval by probing brain activity in a patient who reliably recalled memories of his high school (HS) after stimulation at a site in his left temporal lobe. After stimulation, this patient performed a customized memory task in which he was prompted to retrieve information from HS and non-HS topics. At the one site where stimulation evoked HS memories, remembering HS information caused a distinctive pattern of neural activity compared with retrieving non-HS information. Together, these findings suggest that the patient had a cluster of neurons in his temporal lobe that help represent the "high school-ness" of the current cognitive state. We believe that stimulation here evoked HS memories because it altered local neural activity in a way that partially mimicked the normal brain state for HS memories. More broadly, our findings suggest that brain stimulation can evoke memories by recreating neural patterns from normal cognition.     

Memory amplification for trauma: Investigating the role of analogue PTSD symptoms in the laboratory

Victims of trauma often remember their experience as being more traumatic later, compared to immediately after, the event took place. This finding—the “memory amplification effect”—is associated with increased re-experiencing symptoms. However, the effect has been found almost exclusively in field-based studies. We examined whether the effect could be replicated in the laboratory. In two studies, we exposed participants to negative photographs and assessed their memory for the photographs and analogue PTSD symptoms on two occasions. In Study 1, analogue symptoms at follow-up were positively associated with remembering more negative photos over time. In Study 2, we focused on “memory amplifiers”: people whose memory of the photos amplified over time. Consistent with field research, analogue re-experiencing symptoms were associated with memory amplification. Overall, our findings confirm that analogue PTSD symptoms are also associated with an amplified memory for a trauma analogue.     

Aiding chronic written language expression difficulties: A case study

This paper describes some progress made in helping a young aphasic man (MD) to overcome what had appeared to be intractable written language expression difficulties, which continued to be significant for him. Traditional therapy methods based on cognitive neuropsychological assessment had failed to help MD to generalize improvement in his spelling particularly, but not exclusively, of longer and irregular words. Both a splint which allowed him to use his dominant hand for writing directly onto a computer screen and a simple word-processing programme with synthesized auditory feedback and lexical and grammatical prediction (Write:OutLoud and Co:Writer) enabled him to produce more normal written output (increased quantity and more normal quality). The discussion also focuses on how effectiveness of language therapy can be measured in this man with chronic aphasia.     

Psychiatric controversy: man's ethical dimension.

Although determinism may permeate human existence, man's moral values raise him above the level of an animal and enable him to direct his own life. The author suggests that psychiatrists should influence the patient to exert his will, make conscious choices, and, above all, assume a sense of responsibility for his own actions. In order to free the patient from whatever conditions hinder his will and to help him make choices, psychiatric treatment must consider man's ethical dimension.     

Preliminary evidence for a relationship between prospective memory and PTSD symptoms in the general population

IntroductionPTSD sufferers often have problems with remembering the past, but do they also have trouble remembering tasks to be completed in the future? We argue characteristics of PTSD—such as negative appraisals and maladaptive strategies—might contribute to biased reporting of prospective memory failures among PTSD sufferers—or people with severe PTSD symptoms—within a general population.MethodsMechanical Turk participants completed a questionnaire battery measuring self-report prospective memory, PTSD symptoms, negative appraisals and maladaptive strategies (e.g., suppression), and depression, anxiety and stress symptoms.ResultsPTSD symptom severity positively correlated with self-report prospective memory failures (rs = .42–49). PTSD symptoms affected self-report prospective memory via their influence on negative appraisals and maladaptive strategies.LimitationsOur findings rely on self-report, therefore we do not know if this relationship generalizes to objective prospective memory tasks.ConclusionsOur data provide preliminary evidence for a relationship between PTSD symptomatology and subjective prospective memory in the general population and suggest that the negative appraisals and maladaptive strategies that commonly accompany PTSD might underpin this relationship.     

Kinderpsychodramatische Teilearbeit in der Behandlung einer Enkopresis

This case study describes a single treatment episode for an eleven year old boy who has encopresis; the intervention symbolically explored different aspects of his presentation to help him understand the symptoms of his encopresis. Symbolization of the internal role atom made it possible for the boy to work on this, for him, embarrassing topic and to achieve understanding of his symptoms and their meanings. Once he had accepted the symptom side, it was possible for him to explore his unsatisfied needs in the symbolic scene from the perspectives of the different figures.     

Imagining the future: Evidence for a hippocampal contribution to constructive processing

Imagining future events and remembering past events rely on a common core network, but several regions within this network—including the hippocampus—show increased activity for imagining future events compared to remembering past events. It remains unclear whether this hippocampal activity reflects processes related to the demands of constructing details retrieved across disparate episodic memories into coherent imaginary events, encoding these events into memory, novelty detection, or some combination of these processes. We manipulated the degree of constructive processing by comparing activity associated with the initial construction of an imagined scenario with the re‐construction of an imagined scenario (imagine vs. re‐imagine). After accounting for effects of novelty and subsequent memory, we found that a region in the hippocampus was preferentially activated for newly constructed imagined events compared with re‐imagined events. Our results suggest that the hippocampus may support several distinct but related processes that are critical for imagining future events, and they also indicate that a particular region within posterior hippocampus may uniquely contribute to the construction of imagined future events. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Planning and realisation of complex intentions in patients with Parkinson's disease

BACKGROUND: There is some evidence that patients with Parkinson's disease may impaired in prospective memory performance (planning and self initiated realisation of delayed intentions). Little is known about the effect of the disease on distinct phases of prospective memory and the potential mechanisms underlying these effects. OBJECTIVE: To investigate intention formation, intention retention, intention initiation, and intention execution of patients with Parkinson's disease and test for the mediating influence of working memory, inhibition, short term retrospective memory, and divided attention. METHODS: 16 patients with Parkinson's disease and 16 age and education matched normal controls were given a complex event based prospective memory task which differentiates four phases of prospective remembering. In addition, participants completed tasks assessing potential cognitive mediators. RESULTS: On the prospective remembering task, Parkinson patients were impaired in the intention formation phase and showed a trend towards impairment in the intention initiation. In contrast, there were no impairments of retrospective intention retention or the fidelity with which the patients executed their previously developed plan. The group effects were related to interindividual differences in working memory span. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that the planning phase of prospective remembering is specifically impaired in Parkinson's disease, and that the impairment is related to working memory deficit. In contrast, even when complex intentions have to be remembered, the retrospective storage of intentions to be performed is not impaired.     

Dissociating the “retrieval success” regions of the brain: Effects of retrieval delay

There is abundant evidence that the hippocampal formation critically supports episodic memory retrieval, the remembering of episodes including contextual details. Yet, a group of other brain regions has also been consistently implicated in successful episodic retrieval. This retrieval success network (RSN) includes the posterior midline region, medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and posterior parietal cortex (PPC). Despite these consistent findings, the functional roles of the RSN regions remain poorly understood. Given that vivid remembering leads to high-confidence retrieval decisions, it is unclear whether activity in these regions reflects episodic long-term memory, or is merely associated with retrieval confidence. In order to distinguish between these alternatives, we manipulated study-test delays within the context of a continuous recognition task during fMRI-scanning. The design was based on previous evidence indicating that retrieval at short delays is easier leading to high-evidence mnemonic decisions, whereas retrieval at longer delays is more difficult but also more hippocampus-dependent. Confirming previous findings, we found that retrieval decisions at short delays were more accurate and faster, and that the hippocampus showed greater activity at longer delays. Within the other RSN regions, we found three distinct activation patterns as a function of delay. Similar to the hippocampus, the retrosplenial cortex showed increased activity as a function of retrieval delay. Dorsal PPC and the precuneus showed decreased activity. Finally, the posterior cingulate, medial PFC and ventral PPC showed a V-shaped pattern. These findings support the idea that dorsal PPC and the precuneus are involved in decision-related retrieval processes rather than successful remembering.     

Dissociative contributions of medial temporal and frontal regions to prospective remembering

Prospective memory is memory of future intentions or plans in everyday life. Although some previous neuropsychological studies have stated that the prefrontal cortex and the medial temporal lobe are essential for successful prospective remembering, how the two regions contribute to prospective remembering remains unclear. We therefore used prospective memory training in the present study to investigate the neural mechanism of two components of prospective remembering: remembering to remember and remembering content. Two brain-damaged patients participated in this study: patient Y.O., who had lesions in the medial temporal lobe bilaterally, and patient T.K., who had a lesion in the basal forebrain and right medial frontal lobe. Both participants exhibited a severe anterograde amnesic syndrome and had normal IQ scores. Before the prospective memory training the participants underwent several index memory tests to examine their general memory and prospective memory performance. The training consisted of requesting the participants to perform an original mini-day task, in which they were first asked to memorize five simple daily actions with their times for execution, and then to recall the content of the actions when shown a drawing of a clock showing the proper time for execution. A training session was carried out once a week for 3 months. After completing training, the participants were again requested to take the same index memory tests. The results of the training task showed that Y.O.'s memory performance had gradually improved across all sessions of training, but T.K.'s improvement was not as marked. A more detailed analysis revealed that Y.O.'s memory performance was better for recalling time than for recalling content, whereas T.K.'s memory performance was better for recalling content than for recalling time. Furthermore, the results of the final index memory tests showed that the only improvement in Y.O.'s prospective memory was in remembering to remember, and that the only improvement in T.K.'s prospective memory was in remembering content. These results provide strong evidence that these two remembering components of prospective memory have independent neural bases, with the basal forebrain and right medial frontal lobe being required for remembering to remember, and the medial temporal lobe being required for remembering content. The results also suggest that memory training is an effective, means of improving everyday memory.     

Charcot and art: from a hobby to science

Jean-Martin Charcot not only was one of the founders of modern neurology, but he displayed an exceptionally developed visual perception and memory, with special artistic gifts, which he used first as a hobby and subsequently as a tool in his profession. Previously unpublished drawings emphasize Charcot's talents in caricature, including autoderision. One of the best achievements of Charcot in correlating the clinic with art includes his thorough study of artistic representations of "possessed states", which allowed him to refine his work on hysteria. The artist and the scientist are two unique facets of Charcot, whose permanent coexistence help to understand his legacy.     

Using music therapy to help a client with Alzheimer's disease adapt to long-term care

The purpose of this case study is to illustrate how music therapy can be used to help the elderly successfully adjust to living in a long-term care (LTC) facility. LTC residents, particularly those with Alzheimer's disease or related dementia, may exhibit behaviors such as depression, withdrawal, anxiety, emotional liability, confusion, and memory difficulties, frequently related to the disorder, but often exacerbated by difficulty in adjustment to the change in lifestyle. The subject of this case study demonstrated these symptoms. Music therapy helped him adjust to life in a LTC setting by improving his quality of life and enhancing his relationships with those around him. As chronicled in this study, music therapy may facilitate a resident's adjustment to life in a LTC facility. N.B. Names and identifying information have been changed to protect privacy.     

Louis Delasiauve (1804–1893), an alienist at the dawn of epileptology and pediatric psychiatry

This paper aims to honor the memory of the alienist Louis Delasiauve (1804–1893). His classification of the different types of epilepsy based on clinical symptoms is still relevant today and made him a precursor of contemporary epileptology. In 1851, Delasiauve clinically and etiologically isolated ‘acute mental confusion’ (acute confusional state) from all other forms of dementia. Never deviating from his republican and progressive ideals, he devoted himself throughout the 19th century to treating those insane asylum patients who received the poorest care: epileptics and children with intellectual disabilities. Studying functional cognitive disability as well as mental disability secondary to congenital malformations, Delasiauve developed a novel specific form of pedagogy to deal with delays in cognitive development. This made him one of the initiators of institutional pediatric psychiatry. His ideas would be carried forward by his favorite student, Désiré-Magloire Bourneville (1840–1909). Committed to social welfare, Delasiauve worked relentlessly to improve access to healthcare for the least fortunate throughout France. As a passionate supporter of universal, free and secular education, he participated in a major movement away from religious establishments that involved opening a public school in every French canton.