Korean J Radiol.  2005 Sep;6(3):196-199. 10.3348/kjr.2005.6.3.196.

Functional MR Imaging of Psychogenic Amnesia: A Case Report

Affiliations
  • 1Department of Psychiatry, Chonnam National University Hospital, Chonnam National University Medical School, Korea. gwjeong@chonnam.ac.kr
  • 2Department of Radiology, Chonnam National University Hospital, Chonnam National University Medical School, Korea.
  • 3Department of Psychiatry, Korea University Ansan Hospital, Korea.

Abstract

We present here a case in which functional MR imaging (fMRI) was done for a patient who developed retrograde psychogenic amnesia for a four year period of her life history after a severe stressful event. We performed the fMRI study for a face recognition task using stimulation with three kinds of face photographs: recognizable familiar faces, unrecognizable friends' faces due to the psychogenic amnesia, and unfamiliar control faces. Different activation patterns between the recognizable faces and unrecognizable faces were found in the limbic area, and especially in the amygdala and hippocampus.

Keyword

Memory; Magnetic resonance (MR) ; Magnetic resonance (MR), functional imaging

MeSH Terms

*Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic
*Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Humans
Hippocampus/physiology
Female
Amygdala/physiology
Amnesia, Retrograde/*diagnosis/*etiology
Adult

Figure

  • Fig. 1 These axial (A) and coronal (B) MR images were activated by stimulation with the recognizable faces of high school friends, where distinct activation was shown in the limbic areas: the amygdala, hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus and insula.

  • Fig. 2 The activation patterns stimulated with the unrecognizable faces of the university friends (A) and the unfamiliar control faces (B) were similar to each other.


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