Abstract
Of the many research studies carried out by Nelson Butters, that part of his work which embraced the relationship between the mammillary bodies and human memory developed from two separate directions, clinical neuropsychology and primate neuropsychology. From the direction of clinical neuropsychology, the oft-cited association between damage to the mammillary bodies and the memory disorder associated with Alcoholic Korsakoff’s syndrome was noted by Butters & Cermak (1980) in their classic monograph on this condition. As pointed out by Butters and Cermak, this association dated back to the beginning of the century, yet it hauxs remained controversial. Victor, Adams & Collins (1987) played down the importance of mammillary body pathology in the memory disorder found in Alcoholic Korsakoff patients. By contrast, other authors (e.g. Torvik, 1987), proposed from a similar set of post-mortem material that mammillary body lesions were critical to the memory loss shown by Alcoholic Korsakoff patients.
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Kapur, N. et al. (1994). The Mammillary Bodies Revisited. In: Cermak, L.S. (eds) Neuropsychological Explorations of Memory and Cognition. Critical Issues in Neuropsychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-1196-4_12
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