Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 107, Issue 44, Pages 19044-19048Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1014391107
Keywords
episodic memory; semantic memory; medial temporal lobe; remote memory; amnesia
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Funding
- Medical Research Service of the Department of Veterans Affairs, National Institute of Mental Health [MH 24600]
- Metropolitan Life Foundation
- National Institute on Aging [T35 AG26757]
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It has been proposed that a core network of brain regions, including the hippocampus, supports both past remembering and future imagining. We investigated the importance of the hippocampus for these functions. Five patients with bilateral hippocampal damage and one patient with large medial temporal lobe lesions were tested for their ability to recount autobiographical episodes from the remote past, the recent past, and to imagine plausible episodes in the near future. The patients with hippocampal damage had intact remote autobiographical memory, modestly impaired recent memory, and an intact ability to imagine the future. The patient with large medial temporal lobe lesions had intact remote memory, markedly impaired recent memory, and also had an intact ability to imagine the future. The findings suggest that the capacity for imagining the future, like the capacity for remembering the remote past, is independent of the hippocampus.
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