AJ had spectacular recall of dates and events both in her life, and was able to bring back news events, her schedule, and even details such as how her house smelled for years back. What the news reports didn't make clear was what a big cognitive cost this memory seems to come with. The authors propose that AJ's memory could be called a disorder, and when you look at the details you see why. AJ has preternatural autobiographical recall, but that does not translate to a memory for, say, numbers or patterns.
More strikingly, she has serious impairments in tests of concept formation and executive function--way below average (the study gives some fairly technical statistical results, but they translate to numbers in the bottom 5 percent of normal scores on these tests). AJ--whose kindness in cooperating with the researchers was really great, so it's a little painful to say this--just doesn't think very clearly.
The paper doesn't really settle on a biological hypothesis for what's going on in AJ's brain. Understandably so, since one person just isn't going to give you a set of definitive answers. I won't try to formulate one here, or bore you with technical details. But for the biologically inclined, you might consider looking into some of the studies of scopolamine (once thought of as "truth serum"--maybe more on that in a future post) and apomorphine. Apomorphine clearly clobbers executive function and working memory, with much less certain effects on "episodic memory." Scopolamine, on the other hand, has hugely negative effects on memory formation while leaving most other functions intact and, interestingly, increasing verbal fluency--a profile that's pretty close to the opposite of AJ's.
The paper doesn't really settle on a biological hypothesis for what's going on in AJ's brain. Understandably so, since one person just isn't going to give you a set of definitive answers. I won't try to formulate one here, or bore you with technical details. But for the biologically inclined, you might consider looking into some of the studies of scopolamine (once thought of as "truth serum"--maybe more on that in a future post) and apomorphine. Apomorphine clearly clobbers executive function and working memory, with much less certain effects on "episodic memory." Scopolamine, on the other hand, has hugely negative effects on memory formation while leaving most other functions intact and, interestingly, increasing verbal fluency--a profile that's pretty close to the opposite of AJ's.
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