Neuro

Patient P.N. endured amnesiac episode, after his grandfather passed away. During this four day period P.N. suffered from functional retrograde amnesia. He had impaired episodic memory, although he did have an accessible island of episodic memory. His loss of episodic memory which consisted of events before the onset of amnesia can be seen through the fact that he cannot remember his grandfather's death or funeral. The accessible island of episodic memory is form when he worked at a courier service, and the majority of his memories in the episodic cueing task come from this time. He also showed dramatic improvements when tested for episodic memory during and after his amnesia. He also cannot remember his name, address, or any other personal information. P.N. did have spared semantic memory, general knowledge of facts, rules, and concepts. This can be seen because he remembers the city of Toronto and local sports teams. Also when he took the famous faces test there was no significant change in his scores from during and after his amnesia. P.N. also has spared anterograde memory from the onset of his amnesia.

P.N's case of functional retrograde amnesia is fairly common. It is caused by severe psychological trauma in patients, showing no signs in brain pathology. Although this case does occur frequently, there are many cases where this type of amnesia is fabricated by patients. This is because the there is no physiological way to determine if the amnesia is real.

Patient P.N.'s case suggests many things about the nature and role of memory, the first being that there is a differential impairment of episodic and semantic memory. Since P.N. had spared semantic memory, but has impaired episodic memory, suggests that memory has many different parts and one is not entirely based on the other. Also as the author of the paper suggests this case provides evidence that memory consists of different control elements, which are units that activate or inhibit specific kinds of information. It can also be suggested that the island of episodic memory that P.N. had was because it was a time in his life that he enjoyed a lot. This may mean that certain events depending on their affect on the person maybe stored differently then normal memories. P.N. allowed for the study of functional retrograde amnesia and the involvement of episodic and semantic memory.