The proposed work employs a multidisciplinary approach to empirically test the idea that the hippocampus is involved in, and amnesia is a deficit in, relational memory processing. This form of memory processing is thought to support memory for all manner of relationships among perceptually distinct objects, permitting remembering of the constituent elements of the events, situations, or scenes encountered in daily life or in the laboratory. Based on results from preliminary work that combines eye movement studies, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, and studies of amnesic patients with severe memory disorders, we propose a series of 11 studies that sample memory for the repetition of items and memory for the relations among items (relational memory). These studies manipulate the amount and type of information to be remembered, the nature of the task demands, the modality of presentation of the stimuli, and the context in which the information is to be remembered. The specific hypotheses to be tested in the present project are that amnesic patients are selectively impaired on tasks that require relational memory processing, that hippocampal activity is associated selectively with relational memory processing, and that non-relational forms of memory are associated with brain systems other than the hippocampus. These experiments constitute a strong test of the claimed link between relational memory processing, amnesia, and hippocampal function. They should also serve to further clarify the nature of relational memory processing.
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