Déjà vu and the entorhinal cortex: dissociating recollective from familiarity disruptions in a single case patient

ABSTRACT

Past research has demonstrated a relationship between déjà vu and the entorhinal cortex in patients with wider medial temporal lobe damage. The aim of the present research was to investigate this crucial link in a patient (MR) with a selective lesion to the left lateral entorhinal cortex to provide a more direct exploration of this relationship. Two experiments investigated the experiences of déjà vécu (using the IDEA questionnaire) and déjà vu (using an adapted DRM paradigm) in MR and a set of matched controls. The results demonstrated that MR had quantitatively more and qualitatively richer recollective experiences of déjà vécu. In addition, under laboratory-based déjà vu conditions designed to elicit both false recollection (critical lures) and false familiarity (weakly-associated lures), MR only revealed greater memory impairments for the latter. The present results are therefore the first to demonstrate a direct relationship between the entorhinal cortex and the experience of both déjà vu and déjà vécu. They furthermore suggest that the entorhinal cortex is involved in both weakly-associative false memory as well as strongly-associative memory under conditions that promote familiarity-based processing.

KEYWORDS:

• Entorhinal cortex
• familiarity
• recollection
• déjà vu

Acknowledgments

The present research was supported by a grant from the University of Roehampton and the authors wish to thank the University for supporting their work. In addition, the authors wish to express their thanks and gratitude to MR for her interest and involvement in our research. Finally, the authors wish to thank the reviewers for their insightful and helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Department of Psychology, University of Roehampton London.