Event Information:
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Fri07Feb202011:00 AMSala d’Actes Aulari Universitat de Barcelona: Escola Universitaria D'Infermeria, L'Hospitalet de Llobregat
Invited talk - Learning from amnesia: clinical and theoretical insights from hippocampal dysfunction
Chris Butler |Imperial College London/University of Oxford
Abstract
Memory impairment is common in neurological disease and is often associated with hippocampal pathology. Pure hippocampal amnesia is, however, relatively rare and its underlying mechanisms are controversial. I will discuss research from patients with both transient and persistent forms of amnesia, which provide insights into memory impairment more broadly and from whom important clinical lessons can be learned. In particular, I will argue that many neuropsychological tests of memory are neither sensitive nor specific to hippocampal disease. Instead, we should be measuring forgetting over prolonged periods of time. Accelerated long-term forgetting is a novel and highly sensitive cognitive marker of preclinical Alzheimer’s disease.