The autobiographical memory interview (AMI) in organic and psychogenic amnesia

The Autobiographical Memory Interview (AMI) is a semi-structured interview, sampling a subject's recollections across three broad time-periods. In patients with organic amnesia or dementia, there is an impairment in recalling both autobiographical facts and incidents, and there is a temporal gradient such that early memories are relatively spared. Correlations with measures of anterograde memory are relatively low, and lesions affecting the frontal lobes, anterior temporal poles, the posterior-medial temporal lobes, or even projections from the occipital lobes, can impair retrieval of autobiographical memories. In schizophrenia, an impairment in retrieving autobiographical incidents, comparable with organic amnesia, has been reported in some patients. However a patient with delusional memories secondary to schizophrenia is cited, in whom AMI performance was normal. Finally, patients with psychogenic amnesia show a variable pattern of performance, but, in general, there is a disproportionate impairment of autobiographical memory, and often an anomalous temporal gradient, which can recover subsequently.