Developmental amnesia (DA) is associated with early hippocampal damage and subsequent episodic amnesia emerging in childhood alongside age-appropriate development of semantic knowledge. We employed fMRI to assess whether patients with DA show evidence of ‘cortical reinstatement’, a neural correlate of episodic memory, despite their amnesia. At study, 23 participants (5 patients) were presented with words overlaid on a scene or a scrambled image for later recognition. Scene reinstatement was indexed by scene memory effects (greater activity for previously presented words paired with a scene rather than scrambled images) that overlapped with scene perception effects. Patients with DA demonstrated scene reinstatement effects in the parahippocampal and retrosplenial cortex that were equivalent to those shown by healthy controls. Behaviourally, however, patients with DA showed markedly impaired scene memory. The data indicate that reinstatement can occur despite hippocampal damage, but that cortical reinstatement is insufficient to support accurate memory performance. Furthermore, scene reinstatement effects were diminished during a retrieval task in which scene information was not relevant for accurate responding, indicating that strategic mnemonic processes operate normally in DA. The data suggest that cortical reinstatement of trial-specific contextual information is decoupled from the experience of recollection in the presence of severe hippocampal atrophy.

发育性遗忘症（DA）与早期海马损伤以及随后在儿童时期出现的情景性遗忘症以及与年龄相适应的语义知识的发展有关。我们利用功能磁共振成像来评估 DA 患者是否表现出“皮质恢复”的证据，尽管他们患有健忘症，但皮层恢复是情景记忆的神经相关因素。在研究中，向 23 名参与者（5 名患者）展示了覆盖在场景或混乱图像上的文字，以供日后识别。场景恢复通过与场景感知效果重叠的场景记忆效果（与场景配对的先前呈现的单词而不是乱序图像的更活跃）来索引。 DA 患者的海马旁和压后皮质的场景恢复效果与健康对照者相当。然而，在行为上，DA 患者的场景记忆明显受损。数据表明，尽管海马体受损，但皮质恢复仍不足以支持准确的记忆表现。此外，在场景信息与准确响应无关的检索任务中，场景恢复效果减弱，表明策略助记过程在 DA 中正常运行。数据表明，试验特定背景信息的皮质恢复与严重海马萎缩情况下的回忆经历脱钩。