IMPLICIT MEMORY - WHAT MUST THEORIES OF AMNESIA EXPLAIN

In their target article on explaining functional deficits in amnesia, Mayes and Downes (this issue) discuss the relevance of implicit memory . Our commentary considers a number of implicit memory phenomena that may be especially pertinent to understanding the functional deficits o f amnesia. Recent evidence suggests that amnesic patients do not benef it normally from an exact perceptual match of stimuli between study an d text. We propose that this impairment may reflect one manifestation of a more general deficit in associative binding of information across different brain subsystems. This idea helps to clarify the distinctio n between implicit and explicit memory, and suggests that studies of i mplicit memory can help to elucidate the functional deficits in amnesi a.