The neuroscience of remote memory

Recently, there has been renewed interest in the organization and neurobiology of remote memory, and the pace of work in this area has accelerated. Yet the recent literature does not suggest that a consensus is developing, and there is disagreement about both facts and their interpretation. This article undertakes a comprehensive review of the three kinds of evidence that have been most prominent in recent discussion: studies of retrograde amnesia in memory-impaired patients who have well-characterized lesions, neuroimaging of healthy volunteers, and work with experimental animals including lesion studies, imaging and mouse genetics. The available evidence tells a coherent story and leads to some straightforward conclusions about the neuroscience of remote memory.