Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T21:27:45.015Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Interdependence of episodic and semantic memory: Evidence from neuropsychology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2010

DANIEL L. GREENBERG  and
MIEKE VERFAELLIE
DANIEL L. GREENBERG*
Affiliation:
Memory Disorders Research Center, VA Boston Healthcare System and Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts
MIEKE VERFAELLIE
Affiliation:
Memory Disorders Research Center, VA Boston Healthcare System and Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts
*
*Correspondence and reprint requests to: Daniel L. Greenberg, Memory Disorders Research Center, 150 S. Huntington Avenue (151-A), Boston, Massachusetts 02130. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Tulving’s (1972) theory of memory draws a distinction between general knowledge (semantic memory) and memory for events (episodic memory). Neuropsychological studies have generally examined each type of memory in isolation, but theorists have long argued that these two forms of memory are interdependent. Here we review several lines of neuropsychological research that have explored the interdependence of episodic and semantic memory. The studies show that these forms of memory can affect each other both at encoding and at retrieval. We suggest that theories of memory should be revised to account for all of the interdependencies between episodic and semantic memory; they should also incorporate forms of memory that do not fit neatly into either category. (JINS, 2010, 16, 748–753.)

Keywords

Semantic dementiaMemory disordersTemporal lobeHippocampusReviewAmnesia
Type
Short Review
Information
Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society , Volume 16 , Issue 5 , September 2010 , pp. 748 - 753
Copyright
Copyright © The International Neuropsychological Society 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Baddeley, A.D. (1988). Cognitive psychology and human memory. Trends in Neurosciences, 11, 176–181.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barsalou, L.W. (1988). The content and organization of autobiographical memories. In Neisser, U. & Winograd, E. (Eds.), Remembering reconsidered: Ecological and traditional approaches to the study of memory (pp. 193–243). New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayley, P.J., Hopkins, R.O., & Squire, L.R. (2006). The fate of old memories after medial temporal lobe damage. Journal of Neuroscience, 26, 13311–13317.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bayley, P.J., O’Reilly, R.C., Curran, T., & Squire, L.R. (2008). New semantic learning in patients with large medial temporal lobe lesions. Hippocampus, 18, 575–583.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bayley, P.J., & Squire, L.R. (2005). Failure to acquire new semantic knowledge in patients with large medial temporal lobe lesions. Hippocampus, 15, 273–280.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cabeza, R., & St. Jacques, P. (2007). Functional neuroimaging of autobiographical memory. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 219–227.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chan, D., Fox, N.C., Scahill, R.I., Crum, W.R., Whitwell, J.L., Leschziner, G., et al. . (2001). Patterns of temporal lobe atrophy in semantic dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Annals of Neurology, 49, 433–442.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Conway, M.A. (2001). Sensory-perceptual episodic memory and its context: Autobiographical memory. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London: B, 356, 1375–1384.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Conway, M.A. & Pleydell-Pearce, C.W. (2000). The construction of autobiographical memories in the self-memory system. Psychological Review, 107, 261–288.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Graham, K.S., & Hodges, J.R. (1997). Differentiating the roles of the hippocampal complex and the neocortex in long-term memory storage: Evidence from the study of semantic dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Neuropsychology, 11, 77–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graham, K.S., Simons, J.S., Pratt, K.H., Patterson, K., & Hodges, J.R. (2000). Insights from semantic dementia on the relationship between episodic and semantic memory. Neuropsychologia, 38, 313–324.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Greenberg, D.L., Keane, M.M., Ryan, L.R. & Verfaellie, M. (2009). Impaired category fluency in medial temporal lobe amnesia: The role of episodic memory. Journal of Neuroscience, 29, 10900–10908.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hassabis, D., Kumaran, D., Vann, S.D., & Maguire, E.A. (2007). Patients with hippocampal amnesia cannot imagine new experiences. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104, 1726–1731.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hermann, D.J. (1982). The semantic-episodic distinction and the history of long-term memory typologies. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 20, 207–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodges, J.R., Graham, N., & Patterson, K. (1995). Charting the progression in semantic dementia: Implications for the organization of semantic memory. Memory, 3, 463–495.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kan, I.P., Alexander, M.P., & Verfaellie, M. (2009). Contribution of prior semantic knowledge to new episodic learning in amnesia. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 21, 938–944.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kazui, H., Hashimoto, M., Hirono, N., & Mori, E. (2003). Nature of personal semantic memory: Evidence from Alzheimer’s disease. Neuropsychologia, 41, 981–988.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kitchener, E.G., Hodges, J.R., & McCarthy, R. (1998). Acquisition of post-morbid vocabulary and semantic facts in the absence of episodic memory. Brain, 121, 1313–1327.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kinsbourne, M., Tocci Rufo, D., Gamzu, E., Palmer, R.L., & Berliner, A.K. (1991). Neuropsychological deficits in adults with dyslexia. Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 33, 763–775.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kopelman, M.D. (1989). Remote and autobiographical memory, temporal context memory, and frontal atrophy in Korsakoff and Alzheimer patients. Neuropsychologia, 27, 437–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kopelman, M.D., & Kapur, N. (2001). The loss of episodic memories in retrograde amnesia: single-case and group studies. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B, 356, 1409–1421.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kopelman, M.D., Stanhope, N., & Kingsley, D. (1999). Retrograde amnesia in patients with diencephalic, temporal lobe or frontal lesions. Neuropsychologia, 37, 939–958.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Levy, D.A., Bayley, P.J., & Squire, L.R. (2004). The anatomy of semantic knowledge: Medial vs. lateral temporal lobe. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 101, 6710–6715.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Luzzi, S., Snowden, J.S., Neary, D., Coccia, M., Provinciali, L., & Lambon Ralph, M.A. (2007). Distinct patterns of olfactory impairment in Alzheimer’s disease, semantic dementia, frontotemporal dementia, and corticobasal degeneration. Neuropsychologia, 45, 1823–1831.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Maguire, E.A., Kumaran, D., Hassabis, D., & Kopelman, M.D. (2010). Autobiographical memory in semantic dementia: A longitudinal fMRI study. Neuropsychologia, 48, 123–136.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Manns, J.R., Hopkins, R.O., & Squire, L.R. (2003). Semantic memory and the human hippocampus. Neuron, 38, 127–133.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mayes, A.R., & Roberts, N. (2001). Theories of episodic memory. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B, 356, 1395–1408.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McKoon, G., & Ratcliff, R. (1986). Automatic activation of episodic information in a semantic memory task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 12, 108–115.Google Scholar
Neisser, U. (1981). John Dean’s memory: A case study. Cognition, 9, 1–22.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Piolino, P., Desgranges, B., Belliard, S., Matuszewski, V., Lalevée, C., de la Sayette, V., et al. . (2003). Autobiographical memory and autonoetic consciousness: triple dissociation in neurodegenerative diseases. Brain, 126, 2203–2219.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Reder, L.M., Park, H., & Kieffaber, P.D. (2009). Memory systems do not divide on consciousness: Reinterpreting memory in terms of activation and binding. Psychological Bulletin, 135, 23–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roediger, H.L., & Blaxton, T.A. (1987). Retrieval modes produce dissociations in memory for surface information. In Gorfein, D.S. & Hoffman, R.R. (Eds.), Memory and learning: The Ebbinghaus Centennial Conference (pp. 349–379). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Rosenbaum, R.S., Moscovitch, M., Foster, J.K., Schnyer, D.M., Gao, F.Q., Kovacevic, N., et al. . (2008). Patterns of autobiographical memory loss in medial temporal lobe amnesic patients. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20, 1490–1506.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rubin, D.C., Schrauf, R.W., & Greenberg, D.L. (2003). Belief and recollection of autobiographical memories. Memory & Cognition, 31, 887–901.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Simmons, W.K., & Martin, A. (2009). The anterior temporal lobes and the functional architecture of semantic memory. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 15, 645–649.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Simons, J.S., Graham, K.S., & Hodges, J.R. (2002). Perceptual and semantic contributions to episodic memory: evidence from semantic dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Journal of Memory and Language, 47, 197–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stark, S., Gordon, B., & Stark, C. (2008). A case study of amnesia: Exploring a paradigm for new semantic learning and generalization. Brain Injury, 22, 283–292.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Toth, J.P., & Hunt, R.R. (1999). Not one versus many, but zero versus any: structure and function in the context of the multiple memory systems debate. In Foster, J.K. & Jelicic, M. (Eds.), Memory: Systems, process, or function? (pp. 232–272). Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tulving, E. (1972). Episodic and semantic memory. In Tulving, E. & Donaldson, W. (Eds.), Organization of memory (pp. 381–403). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Tulving, E. (1983). Elements of episodic memory. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tulving, E. (1985). Memory and consciousness. Canadian Psychology, 26, 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tulving, E. (2001). Episodic memory and common sense: how far apart? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 356, 1505–1515.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tulving, E. (2002). Episodic memory: From mind to brain. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tulving, E., Hayman, C.A., & Macdonald, C.A. (1991). Long-lasting perceptual priming and semantic learning in amnesia: a case experiment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 17, 595–617.Google ScholarPubMed
Vargha-Khadem, F., Gadian, D.G., Watkins, K.E., Connelly, A., Van Paesschen, W., & Mishkin, M. (1997). Differential effects of early hippocampal pathology on episodic and semantic memory. Science, 277, 376–380.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Verfaellie, M. (2000). Semantic learning in amnesia. In Cermak, L.S. (Ed.), Handbook of Neuropsychology (pp. 335–354). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science.Google Scholar
Ween, J.E., Verfaellie, M., & Alexander, M.P. (1996). Verbal memory function in mild aphasia. Neurology, 47, 795–801.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weldon, M.S. (1999). The memory chop shop: issues in the search for memory systems. In Foster, J.K. & Jelicic, M. (Eds.), Memory: Systems, process, or function? (pp. 162–204). Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westmacott, R., Black, S.E., Freedman, M., & Moscovitch, M. (2004). The contribution of autobiographical significance to semantic memory: Evidence from Alzheimer’s disease, semantic dementia, and amnesia. Neuropsychologia, 42, 25–48.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed