Impoverished details with preserved gist in remote and recent spatial memory following hippocampal and fornix lesions.

Introduction: Cognitive Map Theory predicts that the hippocampus (HPC) plays a specialized, time-invariant role in supporting allocentric spatial memory, while Standard Consolidation Theory makes the competing prediction that the HPC plays a time-limited role, with more remote memories gaining independence of HPC function. These theories, however, are largely informed by the results of laboratory-based tests that are unlikely to simulate the demands of representing real-world environments in humans. Validation of these theories is further limited by an overall focus on spatial memory of newly encountered environments and on individuals with extensive lesions to the HPC and to surrounding medial temporal lobe (MTL) regions.

Comparable achievement of client-identified, self-rated goals in intervention and no-intervention groups: reevaluating the use of Goal Attainment Scaling as an outcome measure.

Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS) is widely used as a measure of client-centered outcomes in clinical interventions. There are few well-controlled studies using GAS, however, and this limits the conclusions that can be drawn about the determinants of goal attainment post-intervention. In collaboration with researchers, 67- community-dwelling older adults used GAS to establish individualised goals for lifestyle change and memory strategy use in a randomised controlled trial of a multidimensional memory program (ClinicalTrials.

Hippocampal activation and memory performance in schizophrenia depend on strategy use in a virtual maze.

Different strategies may be spontaneously adopted to solve most navigation tasks. These strategies are associated with dissociable brain systems. Here, we use brain-imaging and cognitive tasks to test the hypothesis that individuals living with Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders (SSD) have selective impairment using a hippocampal-dependent spatial navigation strategy.

Impoverished descriptions of familiar routes in three cases of hippocampal/medial temporal lobe amnesia.

Recent research has challenged classic theories of hippocampal function in spatial memory with findings that the hippocampus may be necessary for detailed representations of environments learned long ago, but not for remembering the gist or schematic aspects that are sufficient for navigating within those environments (Rosenbaum et al., 2000; Rosenbaum, Winocur, Binns, & Moscovitch, 2012). We aimed to probe further distinctions between detailed and schematic representations of familiar environments in three cases of hippocampal/medial temporal lobe (MTL) amnesia by testing them on a route description task and mental navigation tasks that assess the identity and location of landmarks, and distances and directions between them.