Role of the hippocampus in remembering the past and imagining the future

It has been proposed that a core network of brain regions, including the hippocampus, supports both past remembering and future imagining. We investigated the importance of the hippocampus for these functions. Five patients with bilateral hippocampal damage and one patient with large medial temporal...

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Published inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 107; no. 44; pp. 19044 - 19048
Main Authors Squire, Larry R., van der Horst, Anna S., McDuff, Susan G. R., Frascino, Jennifer C., Hopkins, Ramona O., Mauldin, Kristin N.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States National Academy of Sciences 02.11.2010
National Acad Sciences
Subjects
Adolescent
Aged
Amnesia
Biological Sciences
Brain
Brain damage
Child
Female
General practice
Hippocampus
Hippocampus - injuries
Hippocampus - physiopathology
Humans
Imagination
Information processing
Lesions
Limbic encephalitis
Male
Memory
Memory Disorders - physiopathology
mental task performance
Middle Aged
Narratives
Neuropsychology
Physiological psychology
Recall
Temporal lobe
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Summary:It has been proposed that a core network of brain regions, including the hippocampus, supports both past remembering and future imagining. We investigated the importance of the hippocampus for these functions. Five patients with bilateral hippocampal damage and one patient with large medial temporal lobe lesions were tested for their ability to recount autobiographical episodes from the remote past, the recent past, and to imagine plausible episodes in the near future. The patients with hippocampal damage had intact remote autobiographical memory, modestly impaired recent memory, and an intact ability to imagine the future. The patient with large medial temporal lobe lesions had intact remote memory, markedly impaired recent memory, and also had an intact ability to imagine the future. The findings suggest that the capacity for imagining the future, like the capacity for remembering the remote past, is independent of the hippocampus.
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Contributed by Larry R. Squire, September 27, 2010 (sent for review August 30, 2010)
Author contributions: L.R.S. and K.N.M. designed research; J.C.F. and R.O.H. performed research; A.S.v.d.H., J.C.F., and K.N.M. analyzed data; and L.R.S., A.S.v.d.H., and S.G.R.M. wrote the paper.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1014391107