Specific, personally meaningful cues can benefit episodic prospection in medial temporal lobe amnesia.

OBJECTIVES To determine whether severity of episodic prospection impairment in medial temporal lobe (MTL) amnesia is reduced by the types of cues that are used to elicit personal future episodes and, if so, whether episodic memory impairment is similarly affected. DESIGN Multiple case study of five individuals with MTL amnesia and healthy control participants. METHODS Participants were administered two tests of episodic prospection: A commonly used Galton-Crovitz task that uses generic cues (e.g., lemon) and a novel task that includes specific, personally meaningful cues referring to planned or plausible future events (e.g., granddaughter's recital). Narratives were scored for episodic detail using the Autobiographical Interview protocol (Levine et al., 2002), which distinguishes between internal (episodic) details and external (non-episodic) details. RESULTS Results showed that specific, personally meaningful cues led to an appreciable reduction of episodic memory and prospection impairment in three of the amnesic cases tested. Clinical benefit from more structured, self-related cues may depend on factors such as extent of MTL damage or general severity of episodic memory and prospection impairment, highlighting the importance of methodological approaches to neuropsychological research that treat each case on an individual basis. CONCLUSIONS In cases of mild-moderate amnesia, specific, personal cues afford more detailed episodic remembering and prospective imagining than individual cue words. PRACTITIONER POINTS Previous reports of episodic prospection impairment in medial temporal lobe (MTL) amnesia might misrepresent an individual case's true prospective abilities Specific cues drawn from a patient's everyday life have greater ecological validity than the more typical generic cues used to elicit episodic prospection and can aid some individuals with MTL amnesia in the ability to imagine future experiences Assessment and rehabilitation tools for MTL amnesic populations should attempt to minimize broad, open-ended questions and instead provide more structured and personally meaningful cues to guide responses Further research is needed to determine case-specific characteristics that best predict benefit from specific, personal cues. These might include extent of MTL damage and overall severity of episodic memory and prospection impairment.

[1]  S. Klein.  The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Autonoetic Consciousness: Reconsidering the Role of Episodic Memory in Future-oriented Self- Projection View Related Articles View Crossmark Data Citing Articles: 1 View Citing Articles , 2022 .

[2]  G. Dell,et al.  Case series investigations in cognitive neuropsychology , 2010, Cognitive neuropsychology.

[3]  G. Cumming,et al.  The New Statistics , 2014, Psychological science.

[4]  Neal J Cohen,et al.  Hippocampal amnesia disrupts creative thinking , 2013, Hippocampus.

[5]  Morris Moscovitch,et al.  Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences Case Studies Continue to Illuminate the Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory , 2022 .

[6]  D. Schacter,et al.  Remembering the Past and Imagining the Future in the Elderly , 2012, Gerontology.

[7]  Alana T. Wong,et al.  Remembering the past and imagining the future: Common and distinct neural substrates during event construction and elaboration , 2007, Neuropsychologia.

[8]  S. Sala,et al.  Episodic future thinking in amnesic mild cognitive impairment , 2010, Neuropsychologia.

[9]  D. Berntsen,et al.  “I can see clearly now”: The effect of cue imageability on mental time travel , 2014, Memory & Cognition.

[10]  M. Linden,et al.  Component processes underlying future thinking , 2010, Memory & cognition.

[11]  D. Schacter,et al.  Hippocampal contributions to the episodic simulation of specific and general future events , 2011, Hippocampus.

[12]  D. R. Addis,et al.  Deficits in past remembering extend to future imagining in a case of developmental amnesia , 2010, Neuropsychologia.

[13]  L. Green,et al.  Dissociations in future thinking following hippocampal damage: evidence from discounting and time perspective in episodic amnesia. , 2013, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[14]  D. Schacter,et al.  Constructive episodic simulation of the future and the past: Distinct subsystems of a core brain network mediate imagining and remembering , 2009, Neuropsychologia.

[15]  Karl K. Szpunar,et al.  Laboratory-based and autobiographical retrieval tasks differ substantially in their neural substrates , 2009, Neuropsychologia.

[16]  D. Hassabis,et al.  Deconstructing episodic memory with construction , 2007, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[17]  T. Suddendorf.  Episodic memory versus episodic foresight: Similarities and differences. , 2010, Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive science.

[18]  G. Winocur,et al.  Aging and autobiographical memory: dissociating episodic from semantic retrieval. , 2002, Psychology and aging.

[19]  M. Moscovitch,et al.  Episodic memory processes mediated by the medial temporal lobes contribute to open-ended problem solving , 2011, Neuropsychologia.

[20]  D. Schacter,et al.  Characterizing Age-related Changes in Remembering the past and Imagining the Future Experiment 1 , 2022 .

[21]  D. Wade,et al.  Writing SMART rehabilitation goals and achieving goal attainment scaling: a practical guide , 2009, Clinical rehabilitation.

[22]  M. Verfaellie,et al.  Losing sight of the future: Impaired semantic prospection following medial temporal lobe lesions , 2013, Hippocampus.

[23]  Herbert F. Crovitz,et al.  Frequency of episodic memories as a function of their age , 1974 .

[24]  Simon J. Ellis,et al.  Bilateral dorsolateral thalamic lesions disrupts conscious recollection , 2006, Neuropsychologia.

[25]  B. Levine,et al.  Threat of Death and Autobiographical Memory , 2015, Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

[26]  E. Maguire,et al.  The effect of hippocampal damage in children on recalling the past and imagining new experiences , 2011, Neuropsychologia.

[27]  Vanessa E. Ghosh,et al.  What is a memory schema? A historical perspective on current neuroscience literature , 2014, Neuropsychologia.

[28]  E. Tulving.  Memory and consciousness. , 1985 .

[29]  G. Winocur,et al.  Amnesia as an impairment of detail generation and binding: Evidence from personal, fictional, and semantic narratives in K.C. , 2009, Neuropsychologia.

[30]  S. Klein,et al.  The complex act of projecting oneself into the future. , 2013, Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive science.

[31]  R. N. Spreng,et al.  The Future of Memory: Remembering, Imagining, and the Brain , 2012, Neuron.

[32]  D. Addis,et al.  Considering the role of semantic memory in episodic future thinking: evidence from semantic dementia. , 2012, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[33]  Thomas Suddendorf,et al.  Foresight and Evolution of the Human Mind , 2006, Science.

[34]  Morris Moscovitch,et al.  Medial temporal lobe amnesia impairs performance on a free association task , 2013, Hippocampus.

[35]  M. Corballis,et al.  The evolution of foresight: What is mental time travel, and is it unique to humans? , 2007, The Behavioral and brain sciences.

[36]  O. Piguet,et al.  The Pivotal Role of Semantic Memory in Remembering the Past and Imagining the Future , 2013, Front. Behav. Neurosci..

[37]  Morgan D. Barense,et al.  Intact Learning of New Relations in Amnesia as Achieved through Unitization , 2013, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[38]  Mieke Verfaellie,et al.  MEDIAL TEMPORAL LOBE CONTRIBUTIONS TO FUTURE THINKING: EVIDENCE FROM NEUROIMAGING AND AMNESIA. , 2012, Psychologica Belgica.

[39]  D. Montaldi,et al.  Two case studies illustrating how relatively selective hippocampal lesions in humans can have quite different effects on memory , 2008, Hippocampus.

[40]  Donald T. Stuss,et al.  Common and Unique Neural Correlates of Autobiographical Memory and Theory of Mind , 2010, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[41]  S. Klein,et al.  The temporal orientation of memory : It ’ s time for a change of direction 2 3 , 2013 .

[42]  L. Squire,et al.  Reply to Maguire and Hassabis: Autobiographical memory and future imagining , 2011, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[43]  L. Williams,et al.  Patients with bipolar disorder show a selective deficit in the episodic simulation of future events , 2011, Consciousness and Cognition.

[44]  Ravi S. Menon,et al.  Novelty responses to relational and non‐relational information in the hippocampus and the parahippocampal region: A comparison based on event‐related fMRI , 2005, Hippocampus.

[45]  B. Levine,et al.  Impaired event memory and recollection in a case of developmental amnesia , 2011, Neurocase.

[46]  Mieke Verfaellie,et al.  Medial Temporal Lobe Damage Causes Deficits in Episodic Memory and Episodic Future Thinking Not Attributable to Deficits in Narrative Construction , 2011, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[47]  Daniel L. Schacter,et al.  The case of K.C.: contributions of a memory-impaired person to memory theory , 2005, Neuropsychologia.

[48]  Eleanor A. Maguire,et al.  Patient HC with developmental amnesia can construct future scenarios , 2011, Neuropsychologia.

[49]  D. Hassabis,et al.  Scene Construction in Amnesia: An fMRI Study , 2012, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[50]  Demis Hassabis,et al.  Role of the hippocampus in imagination and future thinking , 2011, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[51]  D. Hassabis,et al.  Patients with hippocampal amnesia cannot imagine new experiences , 2007, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[52]  Alana T. Wong,et al.  Age-Related Changes in the Episodic Simulation of Future Events , 2008, Psychological science.

[53]  J. Kihlstrom,et al.  THE EFFECTS OF EPISODIC MEMORY LOSS ON AN AMNESIC PATIENT ’ S ABILITY TO REMEMBER THE PAST AND IMAGINE THE FUTURE , 2003 .

[54]  S. Sala,et al.  Future thinking in Parkinson's disease: An executive function? , 2012, Neuropsychologia.

[55]  J. Bogousslavsky,et al.  The thalamus and behavior , 2006, Neurology.

[56]  S. Black,et al.  Cueing the personal future to reduce discounting in intertemporal choice: Is episodic prospection necessary? , 2015, Hippocampus.

[57]  Natasa Kovacevic,et al.  Patterns of Autobiographical Memory Loss in Medial-Temporal Lobe Amnesic Patients , 2008, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.