The Remains of the Day in Dissociative Amnesia
Physiological Psychology, University of Bielefeld, D-33501 Bielefeld, Germany
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Brain Sci. 2012, 2(2), 101-129; https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci2020101
Received: 18 January 2012
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Revised: 29 February 2012
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Accepted: 22 March 2012
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Published: 10 April 2012
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Brain Knows More than It Admits: The Control of Cognition and Emotion by Non-Conscious Processes)
Memory is not a unity, but is divided along a content axis and a time axis, respectively. Along the content dimension, five long-term memory systems are described, according to their hierarchical ontogenetic and phylogenetic organization. These memory systems are assumed to be accompanied by different levels of consciousness. While encoding is based on a hierarchical arrangement of memory systems from procedural to episodic-autobiographical memory, retrieval allows independence in the sense that no matter how information is encoded, it can be retrieved in any memory system. Thus, we illustrate the relations between various long-term memory systems by reviewing the spectrum of abnormalities in mnemonic processing that may arise in the dissociative amnesia—a condition that is usually characterized by a retrieval blockade of episodic-autobiographical memories and occurs in the context of psychological trauma, without evidence of brain damage on conventional structural imaging. Furthermore, we comment on the functions of implicit memories in guiding and even adaptively molding the behavior of patients with dissociative amnesia and preserving, in the absence of autonoetic consciousness, the so-called “internal coherence of life”.
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Keywords:
autonoetic consciousness; anoetic consciousness; priming; procedural memory; episodic-autobiographical memory; psychogenic amnesia
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MDPI and ACS Style
Staniloiu, A.; Markowitsch, H.J. The Remains of the Day in Dissociative Amnesia. Brain Sci. 2012, 2, 101-129. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci2020101
AMA Style
Staniloiu A, Markowitsch HJ. The Remains of the Day in Dissociative Amnesia. Brain Sciences. 2012; 2(2):101-129. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci2020101
Chicago/Turabian StyleStaniloiu, Angelica, and Hans J. Markowitsch. 2012. "The Remains of the Day in Dissociative Amnesia" Brain Sciences 2, no. 2: 101-129. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci2020101
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