APS Award Address

The Cognitive Neuroscience of Remote Memory and Its Uses

Morris Moscovitch University of Toronto

Studies of remote memory are rare by comparison to studies of recently-acquired memories, yet it is only by studying remote memory that we can understand how memory is altered with time and experience at the psychological and neural level. Such studies also are crucial for understanding the function that remote memories serve. The talk will highlight recent evidence from behavioral and functional neuroimaging studies of remote memory in people with memory disorders and in healthy controls. The evidence suggests that the hippocampus is needed to retain and retrieve detailed memories of autobiographical episodes, world events, and spatial layouts no matter how long ago the memories were acquired. Semantic memories, the gist of autobiographical episodes, and schematic cognitive maps, however, can be retained and retrieved without the hippocampal complex. A component process model, and multiple trace theory of hippocampal-neocortical interaction, are proposed to account for the data. The models serve as heuristics for studies showing that the hippocampus-mediated remote memories are implicated in non-memory functions from perception to imagination.