Authors:

SIMONS, J.S., GRAHAM, K.S., Galton, C.J., PATTERSON, K. & HODGES, J.R.

Reference:

Year of publication:

2001

CBU number:

4084

Abstract:

Although semantic dementia has been characterised as a selective disorder of semantic knowledge with preserved episodic memory, previous studies have documented poor performance on Warrington's (1984) Recognition Memory Test for Faces. We demonstrated here, however, that so long as atrophy affected predominantly the left temporal lobe, patients with semantic dementia showed preserved face recognition memory. Patients with structural damage to the right temporal lobe were typically impaired, and analyses indicated that the status of the hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus (including the perirhinal cortex) on the right was critical. Two single-case studies of patients with predominantly left temporal lobe pathology confirmed that their recognition memory for photographs of famous faces was intact, even if their semantic knowledge about the celebrities depicted was severely degraded. An effect of semantic knowledge on recognition memory became apparent only when perceptually different photographs of the famous people were used in the study and test phases. These results support a view in which new episodic learning is typically supported by information from both perceptual and semantic systems.