April 13, 2012 — Amnesia is a multifaceted disease with several variants, some of which are associated with a poor prognosis, note coauthors of a new comprehensive review of amnestic disorders.

“The main message of the paper is that memory is not a unitary concept or unitary neurocognitive function, and conceptual understanding of the division of memory along the time and content dimension is crucial for clinical understanding, diagnosis, laboratory and medical workup, treatment and follow up of amnesic disorders as well as for rigorous research,” first author Hans J. Markowitsch, PhD, of the University of Bielefeld, Germany, told Medscape Medical News.

Dr. Markowitsch and coauthor Angelica Staniloiu, MD, of the Alfried Krupp Institute for Advanced Study in Greifswald, Germany, searched PubMed, Medline, and Scopus to get an overview of amnesia research from the past 5 years, and their findings are published online April 13 in the Lancet.… [Continue Reading]