Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 113, Issue 47, Pages 13480-13485Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1617025113
Keywords
hippocampus; prospective memory; autobiographical memory
Categories
Funding
- Medical Research Service of the Department of Veterans Affairs [CX-000359-05A1]
- National Institute of Mental Health [24600]
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The hippocampus is important for autobiographical memory, but its role is unclear. In the study, patients with hippocampal damage and controls were taken on a 25-min walk on the University of California, San Diego, campus during which 11 planned events occurred. Memory was tested directly after the walk. In addition, a second group of controls took the same walk and were tested after 1 mo. Patients with hippocampal damage remembered fewer details than controls tested directly after the walk but remembered a similar number of details as controls tested after 1 mo. Notably, the details that were reported by patients had the characteristics of episodic recollection and included references to particular places and events. Patients exhibited no special difficulty remembering spatial details in comparison with nonspatial details. Last, whereas both control groups tended to recall the events of the walk in chronological order, the order in which patients recalled the events was unrelated to the order in which they occurred. The findings illuminate the role of the hippocampus in autobiographical memory and in the spatial and nonspatial aspects of episodic recollection.
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