Amnesia Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Amnesia, including details on memory loss, causes, treatment, brain injury,.

Consolidation of long-term memory: evidence and alternatives.

Meeter M, Murre JM

Department of Cognitive Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. m@meeter.nl

Memory loss in retrograde amnesia has long been held to be larger for recent periods than for remote periods, a pattern usually referred to as the Ribot gradient. One explanation for this gradient is consolidation of long-term memories. Several computational models of such a process have shown how consolidation can explain characteristics of amnesia, but they have not elucidated how consolidation must be envisaged. Here findings are reviewed that shed light on how consolidation may be implemented in the brain. Moreover, consolidation is contrasted with alternative theories of the Ribot gradient. Consolidation theory, multiple trace theory, and semantization can all handle some findings well but not others. Conclusive evidence for or against consolidation thus remains to be found.

Published 10 November 2004 in Psychol Bull, 130(6): 843-57.
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