Amnesia for arithmetic facts: a single case study.
We report the case of an anarithmetic patient with a selective deficit of memory for elementary arithmetic facts, who produced, for instance, "25" in answer to "4 x 5." The patient showed good language comprehension and production abilities, had minimal number transcoding difficulties, and mastered normally multidigit arithmetic procedures. She was submitted to a series of calculation, verification, and number classification tasks. The arithmetic deficit was evident in both recognition and recall tasks, was consistent across testing sessions, and did not vary as a function of the format used for presentation of the problems. The patient failed even when only implicit access to arithmetic facts was expected: In a timed addition verification task, she did not show a normal inhibition effect when rejecting addition problems in which the proposed result was the product of the two operands (e.g., "3 + 4 = 12"). We suggest that the deficit resulted from a specific and permanent degradation of some connections and nodes in arithmetic long-term memory.
Service de Neurologie, Hôpital de la Salpêtrière, Paris, France.
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Cohen
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Dehaene
D000328:Adult; D000647:Amnesia / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001037:Aphasia / Q000150:complications / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001165:Arteriovenous Malformations / Q000601:surgery; D001927:Brain Diseases / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008433:Mathematics; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology; D011183:Postoperative Complications / Q000503:physiopathology; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology