Abstract
Developmental amnesia (DA) is associated with early hippocampal damage and subsequent episodic amnesia emerging in childhood alongside age-appropriate development of semantic knowledge. We employed fMRI to assess whether patients with DA show evidence of ‘cortical reinstatement’, a neural correlate of episodic memory, despite their amnesia. At study, 23 participants (5 patients) were presented with words overlaid on a scene or a scrambled image for later recognition. Scene reinstatement was indexed by scene memory effects (greater activity for previously presented words paired with a scene rather than scrambled images) that overlapped with scene perception effects. Patients with DA demonstrated scene reinstatement effects in the parahippocampal and retrosplenial cortex that were equivalent to those shown by healthy controls. Behaviourally, however, patients with DA showed markedly impaired scene memory. The data indicate that reinstatement can occur despite hippocampal damage, but that cortical reinstatement is insufficient to support accurate memory performance. Furthermore, scene reinstatement effects were diminished during a retrieval task in which scene information was not relevant for accurate responding, indicating that strategic mnemonic processes operate normally in DA. The data suggest that cortical reinstatement of trial-specific contextual information is decoupled from the experience of recollection in the presence of severe hippocampal atrophy.
Highlights
Declarative memory de velops over the course of childhood
A remarkable feature of Developmental Amnesia (DA) is the dissociation between semantic memory and episodic memory, whereby the former continues to be accrued throughout the developmental trajectory, while the latter re mains chronically impaired
Through the examination of scene reinstatement effects, here we evaluate 1) whether patients with DA show evidence of retrieval of mnemonic content, despite their poor memory performance, and 2) whether they are capable of engaging goal-dependent retrieval strategies
Summary
Declarative memory (including semantic and episodic memory) de velops over the course of childhood (for reviews see Bauer, 2013; Mul lally and Maguire, 2014). Episodic memories for events in one’s life emerge in middle childhood (between 3 and 7 years of age) (Bauer et al, 2007; Ghetti and Lee, 2011), marking the beginning of a personal autobiography (Nelson, 1992). If the neural systems that support memory fail to develop episodic memory is irrevocably impaired, leading to Developmental Amnesia (DA). This memory disorder emerges after bilateral hippo campal damage in early life (Brizzolara et al, 2003; Vargha-Khadem, 1997).
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