The resolution of many issues surrounding the neuropsychology of memory depends significantly on knowing the specific brain structures that, when damaged, cause amnesia. Identification of the specific sites important for memory has opened the way for more detailed neurobiological investigations. Our work is relevant to issues of how memory is organized in the brain and to issues of memory impairment associated with a wide range of human conditions, e.g., aging, Alzheimer's disease, and stroke. We have several concurrent projects ongoing in our laboratory.
Perirhinal cortex is believed to be a critical component of the medial temporal lobe memory system.
Area TE is a critical area for perception and the processing of visual information. It lies immediately adjacent to perirhinal cortex and is a major source of cortical input to perirhinal cortex. Although it has been supposed that the perirhinal cortex has memory functions and that area TE has perceptual functions, the functions of these areas have never been distinguished within the visual modality. What limited hippocampal lesions do and do not do to memory has been a long- standing issue in the field of memory. Currently there is debate as to whether a separate hippocampal lesion causes any memory deficit at all, or only a spatial memory deficit, or a memory deficit but one that does not extend to recognition memory tasks.