Provides a clear and comprehensive account of amnesia set in the context of our understanding of how normal memory operates.

Enough has been learnt about the organic amnesia syndrome for research to be driven by theoretical ideas about the possible causes of the memory deficits underlying it. These theoretical ideas attempt to specify whether one or several distinct functional deficits cause the memory problems typically seen in the syndrome, what the precise nature of these deficits actually is, and what is the exact location of the lesions that cause them.; This special issue of "Memory" is devoted to articles that advance different accounts of some or all of the features of amnesia. It highlights that, although there is still no full agreement about the neuroanatomy of amnesia, whether it is a unitary condition, and the causes of and relationship between anterograde and retrograde amnesia, many theories converge in suggesting that damage to the hippocampus and its connections dirupts aspects of memory for complex associations that are ultimately represented in the neocortex.

This extensively revised second edition provides a comprehensive overview of transient global amnesia (TGA). First, it deals with the history of TGA before moving on to clinical and diagnostic features and differential diagnosis. Subsequent chapters then discuss the investigation and predisposing and precipitating factors for TGA before attempting to synthesise these many strands in order to formulate ideas about the pathogenesis of TGA. Each of the chapters is devoted to a practical and structured overview of the particular topic, with use of case studies to illustrate the material. Based in part on the author’s experience of TGA cases over 20 years and in part on a review of the published literature, this book will hopefully enlighten clinicians from a broad range of medical backgrounds on the clinical features, investigation, and pathogenesis of TGA. Transient Global Amnesia is aimed at any clinician with an interest in, or who encounters patients with, acute amnesia: neurologists, general physicians, old age psychiatrists, geriatricians, clinical neuropsychologists, and primary care physicians, as well as other professions allied to medicine with similar interests, such as members of memory assessment teams.

In all cognitive domains, neuropsychological research has advanced through the study of individual patients, and detailed observations and descriptions of their cases have been the backbone of medical and scientific reports for centuries. Cases of Amnesia describes some of the most important single case studies in the history of memory, as well as new case studies of amnesic patients. It highlights the major contribution they make to our understanding of human memory and neuropsychology. Written by world-leading researchers and considering the latest theory and techniques in the field, each case study provides a description of the patient's history, how their memory was assessed and what conclusions can be made in relation to cognitive models of memory. Edited by Sarah E. MacPherson and Sergio Della Sala, Cases of Amnesia is a must read for researchers and clinicians in neuropsychology, cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience.

Originally published in 1982, this book brings together two areas of research previously studied in parallel, with little interaction (particularly in the US): normal memory processing and the amnesic syndrome. When trying to document the relationship between the two it became apparent that there was much crossover and duplication of effort in a number of areas: whether long-term memory and short-term memory truly represent independent storage systems, or are simply points on a continuum; trying to determine the primary locus of variables influencing the rate at which information is lost during retention; whether episodic memory and semantic memory represent two different storage systems, or are simply artifacts produced by different kinds of query to a single memory system and finally, whether visual and verbal memory are independent. It was written, following a meeting in 1979, by a small group of investigators, brought together to explore this commonality and to share data and theory, thus beginning the promise of a bright future of interdisciplinary interaction in memory research.

Our modern culture is increasingly expressed in the form of digital artifacts, yet archaeology is in its infancy when it comes to researching and understanding them. The study and reverse engineering of digital artifacts is no longer the exclusive domain of computer scientists. Presented by way of analogy to the process of archaeological fieldwork familiar to readers, the 1986 Electronic Arts game Amnesia is used as a vehicle to explain the procedure and thought process required to reverse engineer a digital artifact. As a go-to reference to learn how to begin studying the digital, Amnesia is shown to be a multi-layered artifact with a complex backstory; through it, topics in data compression, copy protection, memory management, and programming languages are covered.