Human Memory and Its Pathology

One way to study memory is to study forgetfulness. There are shades and degrees of forgetfulness. The man who forgets his wedding anniversary may not need a pneumoencephalogram, his wife's opinion notwithstanding. If he forgets having a wife, however, a neurologist, not a marriage counselor, may be the specialist of choice. This book reviews more serious forms of memory loss—amnesia and dementia—and their relationship to brain structure and function. Written by a French neurologist, it begins with suggestions for evaluating memory loss, mixing the science of Charcot with the intuition of Inspector Maigret in about equal parts. He next considers amnesias associated with specific brain lesions. The first group involves Korsakofftype memory loss in which immediate and remote memory are intact and the patient superficially may appear normal save for one defect: he cannot remember anything that happens a few minutes after it happens. At autopsy, such patients are often