ACQUISITION OF POST-MORBID VOCABULARY AND SEMANTIC FACTS IN THE ABSENCE OF EPISODIC MEMORY

Disagreement exists in the literature over whether it is possible for new semantic (factual) information to be learned in the absence of epi sodic (event) memory. We report the case of R.S., a 49-year-old amnesi c man, who me found to have acquired information about famous people, public events and new vocabulary during the 13-year period since he be came amnesic, despite having no measurable anterograde episodic memory function and a profound loss of autobiographical memory. These data s uggest that at least some severe amnesics are able to acquire new sema ntic knowledge, provided that critical temporal neocortical regions ar e spared. We discuss these findings in the context of recent connectio nist models of memory.