| We report the case of S.M., a healthy woman who is unable to re-experience her past. S.M.'s impairment has been present her entire life. Her development was normal with no evidence of trauma, psychiatric history or brain injury. We assessed S.M.'s memory using two tasks that separate the contribution of episodic and non-episodic processes, the Remember/Know paradigm and the Autobiographical interview. S.M.'s episodic memory is impaired while her semantic memory is relatively intact. S.M's syndrome does not affect other cognitive domains. Her intelligence is in the superior range and performance on standardized neuropsychological tests was normal. We also used structural brain imaging to assess possible brain pathology. While overall brain analyses did not indicate any specific pathology, volume loss was observed in regions that overlap with some of the functional neuroanatomy of autobiographical memory. S.M. represents the first known case of amnesia in a healthy person. The implications of this case are discussed. |
