ABSTRACT
Research on amnesia basically involves identifying the patterns of memory and cognitive breakdown that result from brain lesions with particular locations. In other words, lesions to the hippocampus, the fornix, the mammillary bodies, the anterior thalamus, and possibly to the structures to which the anterior thalamus projects, can each cause organic amnesia. A meta-analysis of many neuropsychological studies of amnesia by J. P. Aggleton and C. Shaw has suggested that hippocampal circuit lesions may cause an amnesia that does not have all the features of a full organic amnesia. The ability to combine neuropsychology with neuroradiology, therefore, enables us to demonstrate that the FAS is not selectively sensitive to frontal cortex damage. This chapter argues that advances in our understanding of amnesia are going to depend increasingly on combining detailed and hypothesis-driven testing of patients with selective brain lesions with careful structural and functional neuroradiological procedures.
