The proposed programs has three main objectives: 1) to understand the organization and neurological foundations of human memory; 2) to understand the ways in which memory impairment can occur and also the best ways to measure memory impairment; and 3) to specify the effects of electroconvulsive therapy on memory. Nineteen separate projects are proposed in six specific areas: 1) characterizing the neuroanatomical and neuropsychological manifestations of memory impairment; 2) anterograde amnesia: the nature of impaired memory; 3) preserved learning in amnesia; 4) retrograde amnesia: memory for remote events; 5) electroconvulsive therapy and memory impairment: clinical studies; and 6) experimental amnesia in the mouse: electroconvulsive shock. The subject populations are memory-impaired patients with neurological injury or disease, patients with circumscribed vascular lesions of frontal cortex, psychiatric patients prescribed ECT, and control subjects for these groups including depressed inpatients not receiving ECT, alcoholics, and healthy subjects. The 19 proposed projects include a quantitative neuroradiological evaluation (CT scan) of patients with Korsakoff's syndrome and two control groups; a series of studies on a newly established population of patients with frontal lobe injury designed to illuminate the contribution of the frontal lobes to normal memory functions; a test of the hypothesis that human amnesia disproportionately affects spatial memory; a test of the idea that amnesic patients can learn and retain novel associations in a normal fashion, although the knowledge can be expressed only implicitly (i.e., unconsciously); a search for the limits of preserved learning capacity in amnesia using tests of adaptation level and other judgment tasks; a study of the status of retrograde amnesia in non-Korsakoff amnesic patients; a study of transient global amnesia, which is an incompletely understood neurological syndrome; and studies of the objective and subjective memory impairment associated with electroconvulsive therapy. Overall, this work should answer questions about how memory is organized in the brain, about how to quantify and classify memory impairment, and about the risks of ECT to memory.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Type
Method to Extend Research in Time (MERIT) Award (R37)
Project #
4R37MH024600-22
Application #
2244110
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (NSS)
Project Start
1979-01-01
Project End
1999-12-31
Budget Start
1995-01-01
Budget End
1995-12-31
Support Year
22
Fiscal Year
1995
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of California San Diego
Department
Psychiatry
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
077758407
City
La Jolla
State
CA
Country
United States
Zip Code
92093
Ocampo, Amber C; Squire, Larry R; Clark, Robert E (2017) Hippocampal area CA1 and remote memory in rats. Learn Mem 24:563-568
Smith, Christine N; Squire, Larry R (2017) When eye movements express memory for old and new scenes in the absence of awareness and independent of hippocampus. Learn Mem 24:95-103
Smith, Christine N; Jeneson, Annette; Frascino, Jennifer C et al. (2014) When recognition memory is independent of hippocampal function. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 111:9935-40
Smith, Christine N; Urgolites, Zhisen J; Hopkins, Ramona O et al. (2014) Comparison of explicit and incidental learning strategies in memory-impaired patients. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 111:475-9
Hales, Jena B; Schlesiger, Magdalene I; Leutgeb, Jill K et al. (2014) Medial entorhinal cortex lesions only partially disrupt hippocampal place cells and hippocampus-dependent place memory. Cell Rep 9:893-901
Smith, Christine N; Frascino, Jennifer C; Hopkins, Ramona O et al. (2013) The nature of anterograde and retrograde memory impairment after damage to the medial temporal lobe. Neuropsychologia 51:2709-14
Knutson, Ashley R; Hopkins, Ramona O; Squire, Larry R (2013) A pencil rescues impaired performance on a visual discrimination task in patients with medial temporal lobe lesions. Learn Mem 20:607-10
Knutson, Ashley R; Hopkins, Ramona O; Squire, Larry R (2012) Visual discrimination performance, memory, and medial temporal lobe function. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 109:13106-11
Jeneson, Annette; Squire, Larry R (2012) Working memory, long-term memory, and medial temporal lobe function. Learn Mem 19:15-25
Jeneson, Annette; Wixted, John T; Hopkins, Ramona O et al. (2012) Visual working memory capacity and the medial temporal lobe. J Neurosci 32:3584-9

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