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Lost in Time: making sense of amnesia


Professor Michael Eysenck


The study of amnesic patients was originally carried out solely for the purpose of understanding their problems. However, it has turned out that we have learned much of value about healthy memory-functioning from the study of amnesia. For example, the strongest evidence that short-term and long-term memory are separate comes from amnesic patients. More importantly, we now know that there are at least two very different long-term memory systems: amnesic patients have damage to the system involving conscious recollection, but the system concerned with motor and other skills is essentially intact in amnesic patients. Thus, amnesic patients have played a major role in increasing our understanding of the structure of the human memory system.

Professor Michael Eysenck has been Head of the Psychology Department at Royal Holloway University of London since 1987. His main research interest is in anxiety and cognition, but he has carried out other research into several other aspects of cognitive functioning. He has written 25 books, ranging from two research monographs on anxiety and cognition to a series of textbooks aimed at students from GCSE level to second-and third-year undergraduate level. The books on anxiety and cognition are based on the assumption that research on the anxiety disorders should be integrated with research on anxiety as a personality dimension, in order to enhance our understanding of individual differences in anxiety.