EVIDENCE OF VERY FAST MEMORY CONSOLIDATION - AN INTRACAROTID AMYTAL STUDY

THIS study provides evidence from intracarotid amobarbital tests (IAT) in patients with epilepsy that complete suppression of the electrophy siological activity of the left language-dominant hemisphere through l eft IAT does not impair memory for verbal information given 1 min or i mmediately before the injection of the barbiturate. Although language functions were completely disrupted and patients were unable to encode new information during the left IAT, pre/post memory was as good as i n the right IAT. This lack of retrograde amnesia leads to the conclusi on that a relatively stable representation of events is achieved withi n seconds after encoding. The results contradict models which assume t hat short-term memory is based on purely electrophysiological processe s.