Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Do amnesics forget faces pathologically fast?

A R Mayes1, J J Downes, V Symons

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Liverpool, England.

Cortex; a Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior
|December 1, 1994
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Strategic retrieval processing and the impact of knowing when a memory was first created.

Brain and cognition·2014
Same author

The electrophysiological correlates of recent and remote recollection.

Neuropsychologia·2013
Same author

Damage to the dorsomedial thalamic nucleus, central lateral intralaminar thalamic nucleus, and midline thalamic nuclei on the right-side impair executive function and attention under conditions of high demand but not low demand.

Neurocase·2012
Same author

Storage of verbal associations is sufficient to activate the left medial temporal lobe.

Behavioural neurology·2012
Same author

Intellectual, mnemonic, and frontal functions in dementia with Lewy bodies: A comparison with early and advanced Parkinson's disease.

Behavioural neurology·2012
Same author

Memory for single items, word pairs, and temporal order of different kinds in a patient with selective hippocampal lesions.

Cognitive neuropsychology·2010

Amnesic patients forget face recognition memory faster initially than controls. However, normal individuals show accelerated forgetting later, matching patient memory loss after 30 minutes.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Neuropsychology

Background:

  • Huppert and Piercy (1978) established a standard method for comparing forgetting rates in amnesia.
  • Previous studies using this method yielded conflicting results regarding forgetting rates in patients with midline diencephalic or medial temporal lobe damage.
  • Methodological limitations, including confounding matching procedures and short testing delays, raise concerns about the validity of prior conclusions.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To address limitations in existing methods for assessing forgetting rates in amnesia.
  • To investigate forgetting patterns in amnesic patients using an improved procedure with face stimuli.
  • To compare the forgetting trajectories of amnesic patients and healthy controls over extended delays.

Main Methods:

  • Developed and employed an alternative procedure to Huppert and Piercy's method, eliminating matching confounds.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Matched amnesic and control participants immediately after face stimulus study.
  • Tested memory recall at 5, 12, and 30-minute delays, including a retroactive interference condition at 12 minutes.

    • Main Results:

    • Amnesic patients exhibited pathologically fast forgetting of face recognition within the initial 5 minutes.
    • Between 12 and 30 minutes, control subjects showed faster forgetting, leading to equivalent memory loss in both groups by 30 minutes.
    • Korsakoff patients (midline diencephalic damage) and other amnesics displayed similar abnormal forgetting patterns. Retroactive interference equally affected both groups at 12 minutes.

    Conclusions:

    • Amnesia, potentially due to storage abnormalities, causes rapid initial loss of face recognition memory.
    • Normal forgetting accelerates later, resulting in comparable memory retention to amnesic patients after 30 minutes.
    • The findings highlight the need for refined methodologies in amnesia research to accurately characterize forgetting rates.