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,.

Developmental study of the hippocampal formation in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta): I. Early ablations spare discrimination learning but not recognition memory.

Rehbein L, Killiany R, Mahut H

Psychology Department, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA.

In clinical cases of amnesia that followed bilateral excisions of medial temporal lobe structures, with some perceptual learning abilities intact, damage to the hippocampus was presumed to be the critical factor. The authors' search for an animal model of amnesia, based on ablations aimed at the hippocampal formation in infant rhesus monkeys, provides support for this view. Ablations of the hippocampal formation in 2-month-old infants tested shortly after recovery from surgery resulted in a deficit on a recognition memory task but left intact the ability to learn the concurrent object discrimination task, even though the latter task was administered with the use of a massed practice procedure. Thus, early damage, unlike that at 2 years of age or later, allowed the authors to dissociate associative learning with repeated trials, independent of hippocampal functions and recognition memory that depends on the integrity of the hippocampus.

Published 6 July 2005 in Behav Neurosci, 119(3): 635-50.
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