Rehabilitation of Memory Disorders

Abstract

Memory disorders are common in clinical practice. This review focuses on the rehabilitation of anterograde amnesia, the inability to learn and retrieve new information, in non-degenerative brain disease. Diverse mnemonic strategies may be helpful in learning specific pieces of information. Their success also depends on the severity of associated cognitive failures, in particular, executive dysfunction. However, unless transfer to everyday activities is specifically trained, such strategies are of limited value in promoting independence in daily life. External memory aids are often necessary to allow for independent living. Learning to use them requires intact capacities such as procedural learning or conditioning. This review further discusses the rehabilitation of confabulation, that is, the emergence of memories of events that never happened. The rehabilitation of memory disorders needs to be tailored to patients’ individual capacities and needs.

Keywords

• amnesia
• explicit memory
• rehabilitation
• orbitofrontal reality filtering
• errorless learning
• memory aids