SUBJECTIVE MEMORY EVALUATIONS IN PATIENTS WITH FOCAL FRONTAL, DIENCEPHALIC, AND TEMPORAL-LOBE LESION

This paper examines subjective memory evaluations and their correlates in patients with focal frontal, diencephalic, or temporal lobe lesion s. Although all patient groups showed significantly lower subjective m emory evaluations than healthy subjects, the temporal lobe group rated themselves significantly lower than the frontal lobe or diencephalic groups despite comparable severity of amnesia, implying more severely impaired 'insight' in the latter two groups. There was a 'temporal gra dient' such that patients rated their memory for 'old' (premorbid) ite ms better than their memory for 'new' (recent) or prospective items. A s in previous studies, subjective memory evaluations were not correlat ed with measures of 'objective' anterograde memory performance, but th e present study suggests that subjective evalutions are not randomly d etermined. It seemed to be the site of lesion (frontal and/or dienceph alic), rather than underlying aetiology, which produced a particularly severe loss of 'insight'. Whether the earliest remote or autobiograph ical memories were preserved or not appeared to be an important correl ate of current subjective memory evaluations, and patients who had bee n memory-disordered for longer were more likely to evaluate their memo ry as poor than those with a more recent onset.