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Remote spatial memory in an amnesic person with extensive bilateral hippocampal lesions

Nature Neuroscience volume 3, pages 1044–1048 (2000)Cite this article

Abstract

The hippocampus may have a time-limited role in memory, being needed only until information is permanently stored elsewhere, or this region may permanently represent long-term allocentric spatial information or cognitive maps in memory. To test these ideas, we investigated remote spatial memory in K.C., a patient with bilateral hippocampal lesions and amnesia for autobiographical events. In his spatial knowledge, general aspects were preserved, but details were lost, a pattern that resembled his memory loss in other domains. K.C. performed normally on allocentric spatial tests of his neighborhood and the world. He had difficulty, however, in recognizing and identifying non-salient neighborhood landmarks, and in recognizing city locations on world maps. This suggests that the hippocampus is not crucial for maintenance and retrieval of remotely formed spatial representations of major landmarks, routes, distances and directions, but is necessary for specifying location details, regardless of when they were acquired.

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Figure 1: Magnetic resonance imaging slices showing K.C.'s pathology.

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Acknowledgements

We thank E. Tulving, I. Whishaw and G. Winocur for advice and discussions. This work was supported by a Medical Research Council of Canada (MRC) grant to M.M. and G.W. and formed part of R.S.R.'s University of Toronto Master's Thesis (June 1999).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 100 St. George St., Toronto, M5S1A1, Ontario, Canada

    R. Shayna Rosenbaum, Sandra Priselac & Morris Moscovitch

  2. Montreal Neurological Institute, Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, McGill University, 3801 University St., Montreal, H3A 2B4, Quebec, Canada

    Stefan Köhler

  3. Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Science Centre, 2075 Bayview Ave., Toronto, M4N 3M5, Ontario, Canada

    Sandra E. Black & Fuqiang Gao

  4. Department of Psychology and Neural Systems, Memory and Aging Division, University of Arizona, Tucson, 85721, Arizona, USA

    Lynn Nadel

  5. Rotman Research Institute and Psychology Department, Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, 3560 Bathurst St., Toronto, M6A 2E1, Ontario, Canada

    Morris Moscovitch

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  1. R. Shayna Rosenbaum
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Correspondence to R. Shayna Rosenbaum or Morris Moscovitch.

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Rosenbaum, R., Priselac, S., Köhler, S. et al. Remote spatial memory in an amnesic person with extensive bilateral hippocampal lesions. Nat Neurosci 3, 1044–1048 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/79867

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