Memory for single items, word pairs, and temporal order of different kindsin a patient with selective hippocampal lesions

One kind of between-list and two kinds of within-list temporal order memory were examined in a patient with selective bilateral hippocampal lesions. T his damage disrupted memory for all three kinds of temporal order memory, b ut left item and word pair recognition relatively intact. These findings ar e inconsistent with claims that (1) hippocampal lesions, like those of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) cortex, disrupt item and word pair recognition, and that (2) hippocampal lesions disrupt temporal order memory and item rec ognition to the same degree. Not only was word pair recognition intact in t he patient, but further evidence indicates that her recognition of other as sociations between items of the same kind is also spared so retrieval of su ch associations cannot be sufficient to support within-list temporal order recognition. Rather, as other evidence indicates that the patient is impair ed at recognition of associations between different kinds of information, w ithin-list (and possibly between-list) temporal order memory may be impaire d by hippocampal lesions because it critically depends on retrieving associ ations between different kinds of information.