Faculty Mentor(s)

Dr. Nate Klooster, Psychology

Document Type

Poster

Event Date

4-14-2023

Abstract

The hippocampus has been found to play a role in general semantic knowledge, but it is unclear if it plays a role in social and emotional semantics. This study seeks to evaluate the role of the hippocampus in social and emotional semantics through the study of patients with hippocampal damage and severe amnesia. Although previous literature has shown that individuals who have damage to their hippocampus show deficits in neutral words, we predict that the hippocampal amnesic group should show the same social-emotional knowledge as the healthy control group. For this study, we investigate this by using more sensitive measures to determine if individuals with damage to their hippocampus show similarities in their social and emotional knowledge as compared to healthy individuals. Participants from the amnesic (n=5) and healthy control (n=16) groups completed feature (bank: loans, accounts, tellers, etc.), and sense-listing tasks (bank: financial institution, land next to a river). Within these tasks, responses for social and emotional words were noted. For the features task, the amnesic group produced significantly fewer features compared to the healthy group. For the senses task, the amnesic group produced significantly fewer senses compared to the healthy group. These findings suggest that patients with hippocampal amnesia show deficits in social and emotional knowledge. Further, this indicates that the hippocampus may play a role in social and emotional knowledge and memory. These findings are relevant for other patient groups with hippocampal abnormalities, and deficits in social and emotional behavior, such as patients with autism or Alzheimer's Disease.

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