What Clinicians and Researchers Should Know and Remember About Amnesia: A Classic Book

Extract

The Amnesias: A Clinical Textbook of Memory Disorders, by Andrew C. Papanicolaou. 2005. New York: Oxford University Press, 336 pp., $57.50 (HB).

Memory is one of the best-studied complex cognitive functions described in the neuropsychological literature. Excellent textbooks and research articles about memory and the brain are, and continue to be, published. Yet, it is difficult to integrate clinical and applied features of memory disorders with basic science data. This may be due to our uncertainty about whether a damaged brain functions like a healthy brain and whether results about cerebral functioning and memory processes for a healthy individual can be applied equally well to someone who has incurred brain damage. Brain circuitry is altered in the presence of brain injury, including the mechanisms of remembering and forgetting. Basic clinical studies of normal memory teach us what is “not” normal but we have learned far less about “how” the brain really functions in the presence of amnesia.