Memory systems involved in professional skills: A case of dense amnesia due to herpes simplex viral encephalitis

Abstract

JL, a 25-year-old physiotherapist, became densely amnesic following herpes simplex viral encephalitis (HSVE), causing bilateral damage to medial and ventral areas of her frontal and temporal lobes and their associated circuitry. Three years post-onset, her WAIS-R full scale IQ (Verbal 74, Performance 102) showed an estimated loss of ± 50 points. She displayed severe global amnesia and markedly impaired social cognition. However, her immediate memory, perceptual priming, and cognitive problem-solving abilities were relatively spared. Her retention of professional skills was assessed using simulated physiotherapy scenarios. JL was able to demonstrate some procedural skills spontaneously, but was unable to apply them precisely and flexibly to individual patient needs. She showed no memory of theoretical or propositional physiotherapy knowledge, and could neither plan treatment nor reason clinically. Her performance was well below that of four other physiotherapists who had also not practised for 4 years. Thus, despite the relative sparing of her implicit memory, JL's performance lacked the co-ordinated operation of declarative and implicit long-term memory and the links to working memory that are necessary for the flexible performance of complex professional procedures.

We are grateful to JL's father for referring her and to JL herself for her willing participation. Alison Ryan assisted in the psychometric testing. A brief description of this case without the psychometric or occupational data has been published in a Festschrift proceedings (Geffen & Geffen, 2005).