People with amnesia 'live in the present'
Selective damage to the hippocampus can lead to amnesia
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Tuesday, 16, Jan 2007 12:49
Patients with amnesia live in the present as they have problems imagining new and future experiences as well as having difficulties remembering the past, a new study has found.
Researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London found that this status was due to damage to the hippocampus, the area of the brain that plays a crucial role in learning and memory.
Although it is known that selective damage to the hippocampus can lead to amnesia, with patients unable to recall past events, this latest study shows that patients' ability to imagine fictitious events is also impaired.
In the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, patients were asked to imagine and describe in detail situations in commonplace settings as well as plausible future events.
"We found that the role played by the hippocampus in processing memory was far broader than merely reliving past experiences," said Dr Maguire, a Wellcome Trust senior research fellow at UCL.
"It also seems to support the ability to imagine any kind of experience including possible future events. In that sense, people with damage to the hippocampus are forced to live in the present."
He added that the study also showed patients' inability to "visualise the whole experience in their mind's eye, seeing instead just a collection of separate images".
Damage to the hippocampus can occur after a lack of oxygen to the brain or other illnesses such as limbic encephalitis or Alzheimer's disease.