Facundo Manes

Ezequiel Gleichgerrcht

Language, Memory and the Temporal Lobes

Transient epileptic amnesia (TEA) is a recently recognised syndrome of epilepsy in which the principle manifestation of seizures is recurrent episodes of isolated memory loss. In this article, we describe the clinical and cognitive profile of this emerging syndrome, and present new data that provide at most weak support for its proposed relationship to cerebrovascular disease. TEA is often associated with two unusual forms of interictal memory impairment: accelerated long-term forgetting and remote memory impairment. We discuss the clinical and theoretical implications of these relatively novel cognitive deficits.

Christopher R. Butler

Adam Zeman

The Causes and Consequences of Transient Epileptic Amnesia

Patients with frontal lobe damage and cognitively normal elderly individuals demonstrate increased susceptibility to false facial recognition. In this paper we review neuropsychological evidence consistent with the notion that the common functional impairment underlying face memory distortions in both subject populations is a context recollection/source monitoring deficit, coupled with excessive reliance on relatively preserved facial familiarity signals in recognition decisions. In particular, we suggest that due to the breakdown of strategic memory retrieval, monitoring, and decision operations, individuals with frontal lobe impairment caused by focal damage or age-related functional decline do not have a reliable mechanism for attributing the experience of familiarity to the correct context or source. Memory illusions are mostly apparent under conditions of uncertainty when the face cue does not directly elicit relevant identity-specific contextual information, leaving the source of familiarity unspecified or ambiguous. Based on these findings, we propose that remembering faces is a constructive process that requires dynamic interactions between temporal lobe memory systems that operate in an automatic or bottom-up fashion and frontal executive systems that provide strategic top-down control of recollection. Executive memory control functions implemented by prefrontal cortex play a critical role in suppressing false facial recognition and related source memory misattributions.

Steven Z. Rapcsak

Emily C. Edmonds

The Executive Control of Face Memory

In this study we describe a patient, TA, who developed a chronic amnesic-confabulatory syndrome, following rupture of a right internal carotid siphon aneurysm.Our aim was to elucidate as fully as possible the nature of TA&#x2019;s impairment and to test the hypothesis of confabulation as reflecting
a dysfunction of Temporal Consciousness, i.e. to become aware of something as part of a personal past, present or future.TA’s confabulations were present in answers to questions tapping Temporal Consciousness, i.e. autobiographical episodicmemory,
orientation in time and place, and foresight of personal future. In contrast, confabulations were not observed in answers to
questions tapping Knowing Consciousness, i.e. to become aware of something as a meaning or as an element of impersonal
knowledge. In fact, he had normal access to semantic knowledge, including foresight of impersonal future. TA&#x2019;s brain MRI
showed lesions involving the right hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, fornix, mammillary bodies, and thalamus. Moreover
TA showed sub-cortical lesions involving the caudate and putamen nuclei bilaterally, a lesion site not commonly described in
amnesic-confabulatory syndrome. We suggest that this pattern of results is better accounted for within the framework of the
Memory, Consciousness and Temporality Theory and reflects a specific distortion of Temporal Consciousness.

Valentina La Corte

Nathalie George

Pascale Pradat-Diehl

Gianfranco Dalla Barba

Distorted Temporal Consciousness and Preserved Knowing Consciousness in Confabulation: A Case Study

There is good evidence that aphasia therapy is effective if sufficiently prolonged or intensive and that chronic aphasic individuals can also benefit from therapy, but data on chronic aphasia are scanty.The aim of this retrospective study was to investigate whether chronic aphasia benefits from a very intensive therapeutic regimen.
We revised the files (January 2000 to December 2008) of the chronic subjects whom we suggested have periodic sessions in our
Unit (generally once a week) and 2&#x2013;3 hours daily of homework with the help of a family member, supervised and controlled
by the speech-therapist. Treatment would go on as long as amelioration is evident. Results for 23 chronic aphasic subjects are
reported. All subjects had undergone previous therapy and 10 had been dismissed because no further recovery was expected.
Recovery was significant in oral and written nouns and actions naming, oral and written sentence production and Token Test
scores. Only 4 subjects did not improve. Severity of the disorder did not predict success or failure. We conclude that recovery
was due to the intense work done. Further, we believe such a regimen could be successful in a number of patients for whom a
less intensive regimen would not be effective.

Anna Basso

Margherita Macis

Therapy Efficacy in Chronic Aphasia

Existing empirical data on proper names processing are critically reviewed in trying to understand which tasks may involve the left temporal pole, which proper name related functions are supported by this structure and eventually offer some speculations about why these functions might have developed in this location in the course of human evolution. While clinical group studies support the idea that proper name processing takes place in the left temporal pole, single case studies of selective proper name anomia or sparing, as well as neuroimaging studies, suggest the involvement of a larger neural network. Within this network, an important role may be played by the ventro-medial prefrontal cortex, including areas critical in social interaction. The differentiation in the brain of proper name processing from common names processing could in part be due to social pressure, favouring a neural system able to more efficiently and unambiguously sustain designating categories or designating individual entities. The activation of the left temporal pole in proper name processing is shown to increase with age. Longer social interaction may thus contribute to convey proper names processing toward areas closer to those supporting social cognition.

Carlo Semenza

Naming with Proper Names: The Left Temporal Pole Theory

We report the investigation of the organisation of proper names in two aphasic patients (NBC and FBI). The performance of both patients on spoken word to written word matching tasks was inconsistent, affected by presentation rate and semantic relatedness of the competing responses, all hallmarks of a refractory semantic access dysphasia. In a series of experiments we explored the semantic relatedness effects within their proper name vocabulary, including brand names and person names. First we demonstrated the interaction between very fine grain organisation and personal experience, with one patient with a special interest in the cinema demonstrating higher error rates when identifying the names of actors working in a similar film genre (e.g. action movies: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson) than those working in different genres (e.g. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gregory Peck, Robin Williams, Gene Kelly). Second we compared directly two potential principles of semantic organisation &#x2013; taxonomic and thematic. Furthermore we considered these principles of organisation in the context of the individuals' personal knowledge base. We selected topics matching the interests and experience of each patient, namely cinema and literature (NBC) and naval history (FBI). The stimulus items were arranged in taxonomic arrays (e.g. Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Agatha Christie), thematic arrays (e.g. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Mr Darcy), and unrelated arrays (e.g. Jane Austen, Wuthering Heights, Hercule Poirot). We documented that different patterns of taxonomic and thematic organisation were constrained by whether the individual has limited knowledge, moderate knowledge or detailed knowledge of a particular vocabulary. It is suggested that moderate proper name knowledge is primarily organised by taxonomy whereas extensive experience results in a more detailed knowledge base in which theme is a powerful organising principle.

Sebastian J. Crutch

Elizabeth K. Warrington

Taxonomic and Thematic Organisation of Proper Name Conceptual Knowledge

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