Preserved Self-Evaluation in Amnesia Supports Access to the Self through Introspective Computation

Abstract

Encounters with new people result in the extraction and storage in memory of both their external features, allowing us to recognize them later, and their internal traits, allowing us to better control our current interactions with them and anticipate our future ones. Just as we extract, encode, store, retrieve and update the representations of others so, too, do we process representations of ourselves. These representations, which rely on declarative memory, may be altered or cease to be accessible in amnesia. Nonetheless, studies of amnesic patients have yielded the surprising observation that memory impairments alone do not prevent patients from making accurate trait self-judgments. In this review article, we discuss prevailing explanations for preserved self-evaluation in amnesia and propose an alternative one, based on the concept of introspective computation. We also consider molecular and anatomical aspects of brain functioning that potentially support introspective computation.

Keywords: amnesia; episodic memory; identity; self-evaluation; self-representations; trait self-knowledge.

Figure 1

Different strategies that can be used during self-evaluation. When rating a given trait (e.g., autonomous), individuals can (1) directly compare it with trait self-knowledge stored in semantic memory (e.g., “I am an autonomous person” or “I am a dependent person”); (2) retrieve a specific behavioral instance linked to the rated trait from episodic memory (e.g., “The last time I encountered a problem with my video camera, I resolved it myself” or “When I bought my first video camera, I asked a friend to show me how to use it”) and use it to infer a general conclusion about themselves; or (3) mentally simulate their emotional disposition to act in a specific situation (e.g., “If I encountered a problem, I would first try to resolve it myself”), using it as an indicator of their general propensity to act in this way at all times, and thus of the trait they may or may not possess. The latter operation, which does not rely on personal information stored in either episodic or semantic declarative memory, is based on introspective computation.