Short-term memory in focal cerebral damage.

Abstract

In recent years increasing interest has been aroused in short-term memory processes and their anatomical substrate. There have been numerous reports, some based mainly on clinical observations and others on experimental findings, but these are not all in agreement, and analysis of the results obtained by different investigators is rendered particularly difficult by the lack of uniformity of methods and by the lack of comparable studies in man and experimental animal. In man. bilateral medial temporal-lobe lesions appear to cause a grave, persistent, and generalized defect of recent memory (Scoville and Milner, 1957; Penfield and Milner, 1958; Milner, 1959; Milner, 1962b) but attempts to produce an analogous deficit in the monkey by similarly placed lesions have been largely unsuccessful (Orbach, Milner, and Rasmussen 1960), although loss of recent memory in both auditory and visual modalities has been reported after bilateral medial temporal-lobe removal in one study (Stepien, Cordeau, and Rasmussen, 1960).