CSHL Press News

Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., Mon., Oct. 3, 2006—A first kiss, an exotic vacation, a sports team championship, a child’s first words: all are memorable events. But when someone has amnesia, have the memories been completely purged from the brain or are they simply irretrievable? Is amnesia a defect in memory storage, or memory recovery?

This has been a vexed question for more than 30 years. Most psychologists tended to support the retrieval-deficit explanation, while neuroscientists interested in how memories work at a molecular and cellular level backed the idea of storage-failure.

This disconnect has limited both scientific and clinically relevant advances. But in a collection of articles published today by the journal Learning & Memory, leaders in the field of memory studies have thoughtfully reconsidered the enigma of amnesia, as well as the methodological and conceptual problems in its study. They point out how studies of amnesia have been important in forming our current understanding of how memory works, and they propose novel ways of experimentally evaluating the neurobiological basis of memory impairment. The resulting section, entitled “The Neurobiology of Amnesia,” includes eight articles, all of which are available online today at learnmem.cshlp.org.

“Questions about the nature of amnesia are ultimately biological questions,” explains Dr. Larry Squire, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, and one of the contributors to the special section. “But some of the best-known and most-often-cited evidence is founded on a behavioral-psychological level of analysis. What we really need to be asking is: ‘In amnesia, what actually happens to the synaptic changes that carry the memory?’”

“There is evidence that bears on that question,” says Dr. Squire. In an experimental setting, animals can “recover” from amnesia under a variety of conditions, something that should be impossible if the memory was not initially stored. But the major challenge is to experimentally assess whether an animal has truly recovered a memory or simply re-learned a task.

Because amnesia is rarely complete and there is often some residual performance ability, it can be argued by supporters of the storage-failure theory that any “recovery” from amnesia reflects new learning added onto the residual memory. The retrieval-failure theory cannot easily be attacked because one can argue that a memory remains inaccessible until the appropriate retrieval cues are provided.

Dr. Karim Nader, Professor of Psychology at McGill University (Canada), is the guest editor of the Learning & Memory special amnesia section. “This compilation of articles brings many of the perspectives concerning the nature of amnesia side-by-side for consideration,” he says. “We hope that it will inspire readers to think of new ways to bridge the different positions and levels of analyses, and that it will give new momentum to the search for answers to the fundamental nature of amnesia.”

MEDIA CONTACTS AND INFORMATION:
Dr. Karim Nader, Department of Psychology, McGill University, is the guest editor of the special “Neurobiology of Amnesia” section in the current issue of Learning & Memory. He can be contacted by e-mail (karim.nader@mcgill.ca) or by phone (+1-514-398-4896).

Contact Maria Smit (smit@cshl.edu), Managing Editor, Learning & Memory, for copies of the following articles, which comprise the “Neurobiology of Amnesia” section:

• “Retrieval failure versus memory loss in experimental amnesia: Definitions and processes,” by Ralph R. Miller and Louis D. Matzel (Learn. Mem. 13: 491-497; DOI: 10.1101/lm241006)
• “Amnesia or retrieval deficit? Implications of a molecular approach to the question of reconsolidation,” by Courtney A. Miller and J. David Sweatt (Learn. Mem. 13: 498-505; DOI: 10.1101/lm304606)
• “The many faces of amnesia,” by Paul E. Gold (Learn. Mem. 13: 506-514; DOI: 10.1101/lm277406)
• “In memory of consolidation,” by Susan J. Sara and Bernard Hars (Learn. Mem. 13: 515-521; DOI: 10.1101/lm338406)
• “Lost forever or temporarily misplaced? The long debate about the nature of memory impairment,” by Larry R. Squire (Learn. Mem. 13: 522-529; DOI: 10.1101/lm310306)
• “Fading in,” by Karim Nader and Szu-Han Wang (Learn. Mem. 13: 530-535; DOI: 10.1101/lm350906)
• “Reconsolidation: A brief history, a retrieval view, and some recent issues,” by David C. Riccio, Paula M. Millin, and Adam R. Bogart (Learn. Mem. 13: 536-544; DOI: 10.1101/lm290706)
• “Retrograde amnesia in patients with hippocampal, medial temporal, temporal lobe, or frontal pathology,” by Peter Bright, Joseph Buckman, Alex Fradera, Haruo Yoshimasu, Alan C.F. Colchester, and Michael D. Kopelman (Learn. Mem. 13: 545-557; DOI:10.1101/lm265906)

ABOUT LEARNING & MEMORY:
Learning & Memory (www.learnmem.cshlp.org) is a leading international peer-reviewed research journal devoted to work in the neurosciences. Spanning genes to behavior, it publishes studies that incorporate a broad range of approaches for understanding the neurobiology of learning and memory in humans and other species. According to ISI’s Journal Citation Reports, Learning & Memory is currently ranked in the top 15% of journals in the neuroscience field.

ABOUT COLD SPRING HARBOR LABORATORY PRESS:
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press is an internationally renowned publisher of books, journals, and electronic media located on Long Island, New York. It is a division of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, an innovator in life science research and the education of scientists, students, and the public. For more information, visit www.cshlpress.com.