The hippocampal role in spatial memory and the familiarity-recollection distinction: A case study

Memory for object locations and for events (comprising the receipt of an object) was tested in a case of developmental amnesia with focal hippocampal damage ("Jon"; F. Vargha-Khadern et al., 1997). Tests used virtual reality environments and forced-choice recognition with foils chosen to equalize the performance of control participants across conditions. Memory for the objects received was unimpaired, but the context of their receipt was forgotten. Memory for short lists of object locations was unimpaired when tested from the same viewpoint as presentation but impaired when tested from a shifted viewpoint. Same-view performance was disrupted by changing the background scene. These results are consistent with Jon having preserved matching to fixed sensory-bound representations but impaired reconstructed or manipulable representations underlying shifted-viewpoint recognition and episodic recollection.