Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA.
Neuropsychol Rev. 2012 Jun;22(2):105-16. doi: 10.1007/s11065-012-9197-y. Epub 2012 Apr 17.
Korsakoff's syndrome (KS) is a pervasive disorder of memory characterized by both anterograde and retrograde amnesia. Although retrograde memory impairment in KS has been less frequently studied, the status of remote memory in KS has been tested across a number of different tasks that measure knowledge of public information (e.g., famous faces/news events), general semantic information (e.g., vocabulary words), personal semantic information (e.g., facts about oneself), and autobiographical events (e.g., events from one's personal past). In each of these domains, Korsakoff patients demonstrate remote memory impairments that can extend back many years or decades. In addition, a majority of studies report that the extensive remote memory impairment in KS is temporally graded, with relative preservation of memories from childhood and early adulthood. The current paper reviews published experimental studies of remote memory in KS, with particular attention paid to (a) the selectivity of the deficit with respect to the age of the memory and (b) the relationship of memory impairment to underlying neuropathology. We discuss the significance of the reported pattern and extent of remote memory impairment with respect to theories about the nature of the underlying cognitive deficits in KS.
科萨科夫综合征（KS）是一种普遍存在的记忆障碍，其特征是顺行性和逆行性遗忘。尽管 KS 中的逆行性记忆损伤研究较少，但已经通过许多不同的任务来测试 KS 中的远程记忆，这些任务用于测量公众信息（例如，著名面孔/新闻事件）、一般语义信息（例如，词汇）、个人语义信息（例如，关于自己的事实）和自传体事件（例如，个人过去的事件）的知识。在这些领域中的每一个领域，KS 患者都表现出远程记忆障碍，可以追溯到多年或几十年前。此外，大多数研究报告称，KS 中的广泛远程记忆损伤是时间分级的，与儿童期和成年早期的记忆相对保留有关。本文回顾了 KS 中远程记忆的已发表实验研究，特别关注（a）与记忆年龄相关的缺陷的选择性和（b）记忆损伤与潜在神经病理学的关系。我们讨论了所报告的远程记忆损伤的模式和程度的意义，这与 KS 中潜在认知缺陷的本质的理论有关。
