We previously reported impoverished semantic memory in patients with hippocampal amnesia (Klooster & Duff, 2015). Here, we test whether this disruption results from the patients not updating semantic representations since the onset of their amnesia. We extend previous work by comparing performance of hippocampal patients and their current age (CA) comparisons (M = 58.5 years) to a new comparison group matched to the patients' age of onset (AoO) of hippocampal damage (M = 36.8). Participants completed feature and senses-listing tasks and the Word Associates Test. Both comparison groups performed significantly better than the patients with amnesia. A key new finding was that the older CA group performed significantly better than the younger AoO group. Semantic memory may become richer over time as additional information is added to existing representations. We conclude that a failure to update semantic memory may explain (at least some of) the previously observed deficits in amnesia and that the hippocampus may support semantic memory across the lifespan. Longitudinal data from patients with hippocampal pathology would provide a critical test of our conclusion.

中文翻译：

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随着时间的推移海马体和语义记忆

我们之前曾报道过海马失忆症患者的语义记忆不佳 (Klooster & Duff, 2015)。在这里，我们测试这种中断是否是由于患者自失忆症发作以来没有更新语义表示造成的。我们通过将海马患者的表现及其当前年龄 (CA) 比较（M = 58.5 岁）与与患者海马损伤的发病年龄 (AoO) 匹配的新对照组 (M = 36.8) 来扩展先前的工作。参与者完成了特征和感官列表任务以及 Word Associates 测试。两个对照组的表现都明显优于健忘症患者。一个关键的新发现是，老年 CA 组的表现明显优于年轻的 AoO 组。随着额外信息被添加到现有表示中，语义记忆可能会随着时间变得更丰富。我们得出结论，未能更新语义记忆可以解释（至少部分）先前观察到的健忘症缺陷，并且海马体可能支持整个生命周期的语义记忆。来自海马病理学患者的纵向数据将为我们的结论提供关键检验。