Rehabilitation of Semantic Memory Impairments

The semantic memory rehabilitation programme of two post-encephalitic patients (Michelangelo and Giulietta) is presented. The programme was tailored on the previous neuropsychological evaluation, which showed that the symptoms requiring treatment were a category specific deficit restricted to living things and anterograde amnesia. As for the former, as both patients had problems in processing information about the structural properties of living things, the tasks developed for rehabilitation concerned visual attributes of items. Neither patient benefitted from cognitive therapy, as a similar representation deficit was detected in pre- and post-therapy test sessions. We interpret this lack of benefit as being due to the concurrence of semantic disturbance with anterograde amnesia that made impossible the restoring of the lost information.