TY - JOUR
T1 - Imagining the present
T2 - Amnesia may impair descriptions of the present as well as of the future and the past
AU - Zeman, Adam Z J
AU - Beschin, Nicoletta
AU - Dewar, Michaela
AU - Della Sala, Sergio
N1 - Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Srl. All rights reserved.
PY - 2013/3
Y1 - 2013/3
N2 - Recent evidence suggests that in some patients with amnesia the capacity to imagine the future is impaired in parallel with the capacity to remember the past. This paper asks whether descriptions of the present may be similarly affected. We recruited 7 patients with amnesic syndromes of varying aetiologies who were matched for age, sex and education with 7 control participants. Patients showed no deficits on subjective measures of visual imagery. They were impaired by comparison with controls on measures of imagination and future thinking. However there was an even more marked impairment on tasks requiring them to give descriptions of their current experience. Potential explanations include effects of amnesia on narrative construction or on the texture of experience itself, and the confounding influence of cognitive impairments outside the memory domain. We conclude that tasks requiring descriptions of current experience provide a valuable control condition in studies examining the relationship between memory and imagination.
AB - Recent evidence suggests that in some patients with amnesia the capacity to imagine the future is impaired in parallel with the capacity to remember the past. This paper asks whether descriptions of the present may be similarly affected. We recruited 7 patients with amnesic syndromes of varying aetiologies who were matched for age, sex and education with 7 control participants. Patients showed no deficits on subjective measures of visual imagery. They were impaired by comparison with controls on measures of imagination and future thinking. However there was an even more marked impairment on tasks requiring them to give descriptions of their current experience. Potential explanations include effects of amnesia on narrative construction or on the texture of experience itself, and the confounding influence of cognitive impairments outside the memory domain. We conclude that tasks requiring descriptions of current experience provide a valuable control condition in studies examining the relationship between memory and imagination.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84875267834&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.cortex.2012.03.008
DO - 10.1016/j.cortex.2012.03.008
M3 - Article
C2 - 22525357
SN - 0010-9452
VL - 49
SP - 637
EP - 645
JO - Cortex
JF - Cortex
IS - 3
ER -