The review by Wortzel and Arciniegas of the phenomenology and neuroanatomy of memory is a welcome complement to our psychiatric clinical perspective on the concept of amnesia in relation to crime. The authors raise their concerns in noting that certain concepts referred to in the literature are inconsistent with the phenomenology and neurobiology of memory. In response, we clarify the DSM-IV-TR...

Offenders often claim to have committed their crimes in a dissociative state and some allege amnesia for their criminal actions. Although much research has examined dissociative and related phenomena, such as amnesia, in victims and witnesses to traumatic and criminal events, little research has investigated dissociation in incarcerated offenders, particularly in relation to their offences. The...

BACKGROUND A major symptom of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID; formerly Multiple Personality Disorder) is dissociative amnesia, the inability to recall important personal information. Only two case studies have directly addressed autobiographical memory in DID. Both provided evidence suggestive of dissociative amnesia. The aim of the current study was to objectively assess transfer of autob...

We report two cases of recovery from retrograde amnesia, which occurred almost suddenly, 1 year and 1 month from onset, respectively. Amnesia followed a left thalamic infarction in one patient and a mild head trauma in the other. Full and permanent recovery occurred within a short time after the spontaneous emergence to consciousness of a single autobiographical event, triggered by the specific...

It is controversial whether isolated lesions of mammillothalamic tract (MTT) produce significant amnesia. Since the MTT is small and adjacent to several important structures for memory, amnesia associated with isolated MTT infarction has been rarely reported. We report a patient who developed amnesia following an infarction of the left MTT that spared adjacent memory-related structures includin...

This article reviews 147 cases of amnesia following damage including the hippocampus or fornix as reported in 179 publications. The aetiology, mnestic abilities and reference(s) are tabulated for each case. Consistent findings across cases include the association of bilateral hippocampal damage with a deficit in anterograde episodic memory combined with spared procedural and working memory. The...

Perpetrators sometimes claim loss of memory for the crimes they have committed. For the neuropsychologist, the veracity of such crime-related amnesia is difficult to assess. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether Symptom Validity Testing (SVT) can be used to detect feigning of crime-related amnesia. Undergraduate students (N = 39) were instructed to commit a mock crime and aske...

PURPOSE This study examined the incidence of side effects occurring with three doses of orally administered triazolam in children undergoing restorative dental procedures. METHODS Thirty children, aged 39-81 months, participated in the study. The children were pretested for gait ataxia, amnesia, visual acuity, stereoscopic depth perception, and diplopia during a screening session. In a subseq...