Schmolck

Schmolck

1. Aim

   • To investigate the effects of specific brain damage on semantic memory compared to "normals"
   • To see if semantic test scores was affected by temporal lobe damage, to see if HM was a unique case

2. Procedure

   • 6 ppts with amnesia and 8 normal
     • Some had MTL damage
     • Some had Hippocampus damage
     • HM - Lateral MTL
     • All had bilateral damage
     • Anterolateral Temporal Cortex Damage
   • 9 semantic questions
     • Outlines of 24 animals and 24 objects to be categorised
     • 7 from Semantic test battery
     • Over 5 sessions
   • % of correct responses scored
   • Inter-rater reliability
   • Further 4 tests for colouring correctly
   • fMRI scans

3. Results

   • 1-9
     • MTL+ people did not do as well
     • Those with hippocampus damage damage did better
     • HM did the worst out of MTL groups
     • MTL+ struggled with fact recall
     • Correlation with performance and brain damage
     • Those with Anterolateral Temporal Cortex damage had impaired knowledge
   • 10-13
     • MTL+ performed well (however one made 8 errors)
       • Scored well on colouring
     • MTL+ and HM did the worst on Palm Tree test (matching objects together)

4. Conclusion

   • Semantic knowledge is linked to Anterolateral Temporal Cortex and not the MTL