Preservation of famous person knowledge in a patient with severe post anoxic amnesia

A 58 year old patient (ES) suffered severe anterograde and retrograde amnesia following prolonged cardiac arrest with presumed hypoxic brain damage. Personally relevant autobiographical memory was severely impaired as was knowledge of public events. In contrast, knowledge of famous people was very well preserved. This findings has implications for the organisation of remote memory. Knowledge of people is clearly represented independently from autobiographical memory. We argue that this pattern of profound autobiographical amnesia may result from either multifocal neocortical damage (as in this case) or a failure of the "thematic framework" system involved in the active reconstruction of autobiographical memory, as hypothesised in another patient with thalamic infarction who showed a similar pattern of results (Hodges and McCarthy, 1993).