TY - JOUR
T1 - Damage to right medial temporal structures disrupts the capacity for scene construction-a case study
AU - Irish, Muireann
AU - Mothakunnel, Annu
AU - Dermody, Nadene
AU - Wilson, Nikki-Anne
AU - Hodges, John R.
AU - Piguet, Olivier
PY - 2017/6
Y1 - 2017/6
N2 - The medial temporal lobes (MTLs) are widely held to support a range of constructive endeavors including remembering the past, envisaging the future, and imagining hypothetical scenarios. While right MTL structures have been ascribed a prominent role in the construction of spatial contexts, lesion evidence to directly test this hypothesis is lacking. To this end, we assessed scene construction performance in two cases, GC and DF, who presented with left- and right-lateralized presentations of semantic dementia, respectively. GC displayed characteristic semantic processing difficulties in the context of marked left anterior and medial temporal lobe atrophy. Despite significant volume loss across the entire length of the left hippocampus, GC was capable of generating richly detailed, spatially coherent scenes, most likely reflecting the preservation of his right anterior MTL. In contrast, DF's cognitive profile was one of the dense prosopagnosia, with subjectively reported gaps in autobiographical memory and wayfinding difficulties. Formal testing on the scene construction task revealed striking deficits, with DF producing impoverished descriptions of spatially fragmented scenes. We attribute DF's inability to construct spatially contiguous scenes to the degeneration of right-sided MTL structures, most prominently the right anterior hippocampus (19% volume loss) and right parahippocampal cortex (23% volume loss). Our findings complement the extant fMRI literature to suggest a fundamental role for right medial temporal regions in the construction of rich detailed spatial arrays.
AB - The medial temporal lobes (MTLs) are widely held to support a range of constructive endeavors including remembering the past, envisaging the future, and imagining hypothetical scenarios. While right MTL structures have been ascribed a prominent role in the construction of spatial contexts, lesion evidence to directly test this hypothesis is lacking. To this end, we assessed scene construction performance in two cases, GC and DF, who presented with left- and right-lateralized presentations of semantic dementia, respectively. GC displayed characteristic semantic processing difficulties in the context of marked left anterior and medial temporal lobe atrophy. Despite significant volume loss across the entire length of the left hippocampus, GC was capable of generating richly detailed, spatially coherent scenes, most likely reflecting the preservation of his right anterior MTL. In contrast, DF's cognitive profile was one of the dense prosopagnosia, with subjectively reported gaps in autobiographical memory and wayfinding difficulties. Formal testing on the scene construction task revealed striking deficits, with DF producing impoverished descriptions of spatially fragmented scenes. We attribute DF's inability to construct spatially contiguous scenes to the degeneration of right-sided MTL structures, most prominently the right anterior hippocampus (19% volume loss) and right parahippocampal cortex (23% volume loss). Our findings complement the extant fMRI literature to suggest a fundamental role for right medial temporal regions in the construction of rich detailed spatial arrays.
KW - imagination
KW - episodic memory
KW - semantic dementia
KW - hippocampus
KW - mental time travel
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85019495217&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/CE110001021
UR - http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/FT160100096
UR - http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1037746
UR - http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1103258
U2 - 10.1002/hipo.22722
DO - 10.1002/hipo.22722
M3 - Article
C2 - 28244174
SN - 1050-9631
VL - 27
SP - 635
EP - 641
JO - Hippocampus
JF - Hippocampus
IS - 6
ER -