Theories of Organic Amnesia

Book excerpt: Enough has been learnt about the organic amnesia syndrome for research to be driven by theoretical ideas about the possible causes of the memory deficits underlying it. These theoretical ideas attempt to specify whether one or several distinct functional deficits cause the memory problems typically seen in the syndrome, what the precise nature of these deficits actually is, and what is the exact location of the lesions that cause them.; This special issue of "Memory" is devoted to articles that advance different accounts of some or all of the features of amnesia. It highlights that, although there is still no full agreement about the neuroanatomy of amnesia, whether it is a unitary condition, and the causes of and relationship between anterograde and retrograde amnesia, many theories converge in suggesting that damage to the hippocampus and its connections dirupts aspects of memory for complex associations that are ultimately represented in the neocortex.