Abstract
Retrograde amnesia (RA), loss of memory for the pre-morbid period, is a primary characteristic of Korsakoff’s Syndrome. Without exception, published reports of this disorder indicate an RA extending back between 25 and 35 years into the pre-morbid period (see Parkin, 1984 for a review). A critical feature of this RA is that it follows Ribot’s Law (1882): severity of memory loss is an inverse function of the age of any given memory, i.e. the more recent a memory is the more likey it is to be impaired (e.g. Albert et al., 1979). The presence of these temporal gradients in Korsakoff’s Syndrome presents a major challenge to theorists and their explanation is essential to any proper account of this intriguing memory disorder.
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Montaldi, D., Parkin, A.J. (1989). Retrograde Amnesia in Korsakoff’s syndrome: an Experimental and Theoretical Analysis. In: Crawford, J.R., Parker, D.M. (eds) Developments in Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9996-5_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9996-5_17
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