ABSTRACT
In fiction, amnesics are typically portrayed as wandering the streets, unable to say who they are or how they came to be there. Amnesia of this sort does occur (see chapter 10), but in neuropsychology, the term amnesic is most commonly used to describe a patient suffering from what is called the amnesic syndrome. This can be defined as a permanent global disorder of memory following brain damage. Historically, interest in the amnesic syndrome lagged behind interest in other neurological conditions. The early Egyptians were the first to document neurological problems. Among the Greeks, Hippocrates (460-370BC) correctly diagnosed epilepsy as a disease of the brain, and also noted that damage to one side of the brain produced paralysis and convulsions on the opposite side of the body. However, neither Hippocrates nor any other Greek scholar appears to have linked disorders of memory with the brain. Indeed, some Greeks, such as Aristotle, considered that memory was located in the heart.
