Characterizing amnesic patients for neurobehavioral study.

During the past 100 years, neuropsychological testing of amnesic patients has provided a valuable method for learning about the structure and organization of normal memory. One complicating feature of this work is the fact that amnesic patients differ in terms of the pattern of their lesions and in terms of what damage is present in addition to the lesions that cause amnesia. Accordingly, as the questions asked of amnesic patients have become more sophisticated, it has become increasingly important in every group of study patients to obtain information about both the severity and the selectiveness of memory impairment. The present article considers the suitability of several memory tests and other cognitive tests for the purpose of characterizing amnesic patients. Data from these tests are presented for 10 amnesic patients (6 with Korsakoff's syndrome, 3 with amnesia owing to anoxia or ischemia, and case N.A.), who constitute our standing population of study patients, and for two control groups. Data from most of the tests are also presented for patients who were amnesic following bilateral electroconvulsive therapy. Neuropsychological descriptions of patients, which appear in the Subjects section of experimental articles, need to be expanded and standardized if published findings from one laboratory are to provide a foundation for work in other laboratories with different study patients.