ABSTRACT
Memory processing may occur under “abnormal” circumstances that result from specifiable pathological conditions. More generally, these circumstances result from disruption of the normal physiological status of an organism by neural damage or other sources of interference with the action of the central nervous system (CNS). Our first concern in this chapter will be clinical cases of human subjects suffering from disease or trauma of the brain that yields exaggerated forgetting. We shall also consider briefly abnormal circumstances that appear to accelerate forgetting, but have no obvious link to physiological misfunction. Thereafter, we shall examine methods that have been applied in the experimental analysis of the abnormal processing of memories, including a variety of physiological manipulations employed in the study of memory processing in animals. It will be of value to discuss the characteristics of these physiological manipulations (principally, electrical or chemical disruption of the CNS) and to describe their basic behavioral consequences together with the rationale underlying their application.
