ABSTRACT

There are two kinds of neuropsychological single case studies. The first kind is the study of a patient who has a selective and accurately localized lesion in a brain region of theoretical interest, and which aims to determine his/her pattern of memory/cognitive performance relative to suitably matched controls. Single cases like these differ radically from the second kind of single case study where the sole interest is to find behavioural dissociations in order to determine how the normal human mind is functionally organized. YR had an unusually selective and symmetrical lesion of the hippocampus. The finding that YR had intact item familiarity but impaired recollection predicted that her item recognition would be impaired on specific item recognition tests that rely heavily on recollection. YR was unimpaired on the intra-item associative recognition memory tests, with her performance on these tests being at a comparable level to her old/new item recognition performance.