• unable to recall/recognise declarative information (verbally and/or visually) <- knowing WHAT

• however could acquire & retain new perceptual-motor skills <- knowing HOW

• on occasions, S.Z. would demonstrate his severe amnesia by consecutively playing the same song

• unpublished experiment: played song 'You Raise Me Up' 8 times in 22 min period, with a 30-60 second break in between

• when asked if he recognised the song he had played, or as to whether he had played the song before, S.Z. said no every time

• this example demonstrates his lack of declarative memory regarding the song (knowing WHAT), but the processes of HOW to play remained intact

Using this, Patient S.Z. should be unable to curate new declarative memories regarding music and learning pieces from memory, as this falls under knowing WHAT.

• declarative memory describes those that are factual

• includes information about processes <- process of playing the saxophone?

Cermak, L. S., & O'Connor, M. (1983). The anterograde and retrograde retrieval ability of a patient with amnesia due to encephalitis. Neuropsychologia, 21(3), 213-234.

Markowitsch, H. J. (2008). Anterograde amnesia. Handbook of clinical neurology, 88, 155-183.

Summary:

• The procedural knowledge of how to play the saxophone survived the anterograde amnesia and was resilient to the disrupted declarative memory

• The 3 months of intensive training highlighted the distinction between the ability to acquire new non-declarative memories for musical material and the inability to learn any declarative information about the songs

• The experiment consisted of 11 songs (Blind to S.Z.) in the form of sheet music being given to an orchestra and S.Z. to later play. Researchers ensured that S.S. lacked awareness of these songs by conferring with his family.

• 5 songs were utilised as controls, and were only played during testing studies, but S.Z. didn't practice or play these between testing, to see if the researchers were measuring his memories or practice effects (getting better from multiple trials).

• A further control of an examiner blind to the stimulus condition, rated the difficulty of the songs for an amateur to play (scale from 1-10).

• 100 day separation between the 2 testing conditions (time 1 and 2)-> see impact over time.

• Time 1= One week before the orchestra played. Time 2= Testing 3 months after continuous rehearsals with the orchestra 2x a week, for an hour.

• S.Z. = Practiced songs for 30 hours, before playing 16 songs alone using sheet music.

• S.Z.'s performance= recorded using audio recorder, and rated by a professional saxophonist(blind to song order and song condition) on his; intonation, sound quality, rhythmic aware ness, notes awareness, and sheet-reading accuracy (rated on a 10-point performance scale).

• Patients with dense amnesia due to bilateral medial temporal lobe damage (e.g., Anderson et al., 2007) or due to dementia of the Alzheimer's type (e.g., Beatty et al., 1999) have suggested a remarkable ability to continue to perform certain types of activities before brain injury (e.g., driving, playing a musical instrument).

• Cohen and Squire (1980) found that amnesic patients were able to acquire the mirror reading skill at a normal rate (despite poor memory for the words that they had read)

Case studies

• Well-known case: Clive Wearing

  • A renowned musicologist with severe amnesia after sustaining bilateral medial temporal lobe damage due to herpes simplex encephalitis (Wilson et al., 1995, p.679-680)

  • Intact ability to "sight-read, …, play from a figured bass, transpose, and extemporize."

  • Unknown: whether or not Clive can learn how to play new songs

• Two early cases (teach unfamiliar songs to piano players with dementia of the Alzheimer's type)

  • Sight-reading (Battey et al., 1988)

  • By ear (Beatty et al., 1999)

  • Both patients could play familiar songs that had been learned priorly. However, the ability to learn a new composition was rather limited

• Fornazzari and colleagues (2006, p. 611)

  • Assessed the ability of a professional pianist with probable Alzheimer's disease to learn unfamiliar musical pieces

  • Gradual improvements in overall performance and in rhythm, field elements, harmony, melodic accuracy, and sophistication in the accompaniment of the left hand” over seven days

• Baur and colleagues (2000)

  • Herpes simplex encephalitis patients (C.H.)

  • Did not have any premorbid sight-reading training; do not have any experience playing a musical instrument

  • Able to

    • Learn how to play 90 pieces of Austrian and German folk music after listening to the songs on the radio or tape

    • Play a song when cued with the song title

    • Provide the song title when cued with a recording of the music