Viskontas I V, McAndrews M P, Moscovitch M
Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, and Neuroscience Program, University Health Network, Toronto Western Hospital, Ontario Canada.
J Neurosci. 2000 Aug 1;20(15):5853-7. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.20-15-05853.2000.
The nature of remote memory impairment in patients with medial temporal lobe damage is the subject of some debate. While some investigators have found that retrograde amnesia in such patients is temporally graded, with relative sparing of remote memories (Squire and Alvarez, 1995), others contend that impairment is of very long duration and that remote memories are not necessarily spared (Sanders and Warrington, 1971; Nadel and Moscovitch, 1997). In this study, remote memory was assessed in 25 patients with unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy and 22 non-neurologically impaired controls using the Autobiographical Memory Interview (Kopelman et al., 1989). Results indicate that patients have impaired personal episodic memory but intact personal semantic memory. The impairment extends even to the most remote time periods in early childhood, long before seizure onset in many patients. As well, patients awaiting temporal lobectomy for control of seizures perform as poorly as those who have already undergone resective surgery. These results support the hypothesis that temporal lobe damage or dysfunction, caused by recurrent seizures or surgical excision, results in extensive retrograde amnesia for personal episodic memories. Interestingly, patients with radiological evidence of hippocampal sclerosis were not significantly more impaired than those without obvious sclerosis. These results indicate that even minimal damage to medial temporal lobes results in significant impairment to autobiographical episodic memory. These findings are more compatible with a memory loss or retrieval deficit rather than a consolidation account of remote memory impairment.
内侧颞叶损伤患者的远隔记忆损害的本质是一些争论的主题。虽然一些研究者发现此类患者的逆行性遗忘在时间上是分级的，远隔记忆相对保留（斯夸尔和阿尔瓦雷斯，1995年），但其他人则认为损害持续时间很长，远隔记忆不一定保留（桑德斯和沃林顿，1971年；纳德尔和莫斯科维奇，1997年）。在本研究中，使用自传体记忆访谈（科普曼等人，1989年）对25名单侧颞叶癫痫患者和22名无神经功能损害的对照者进行了远隔记忆评估。结果表明，患者的个人情景记忆受损，但个人语义记忆完好。这种损害甚至延伸到许多患者癫痫发作开始很久以前的幼儿期最遥远的时间段。同样，等待颞叶切除术以控制癫痫发作的患者表现与已经接受切除手术的患者一样差。这些结果支持这样的假设，即由反复发作或手术切除引起的颞叶损伤或功能障碍会导致对个人情景记忆的广泛逆行性遗忘。有趣的是，有海马硬化影像学证据的患者与没有明显硬化的患者相比，受损程度并没有显著增加。这些结果表明，即使内侧颞叶的微小损伤也会导致自传体情景记忆的显著损害。这些发现更符合记忆丧失或检索缺陷，而不是远隔记忆损害的巩固理论。
