Patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease and normal
controls were tested on a retrograde amnesia test with semantic content
(Neologism and Vocabulary Test, or NVT), consisting of neologisms to be
defined. Patients showed a decrement as compared to normal controls,
pointing to retrograde amnesia within semantic memory. No evidence for
a gradient within this amnesia was found, although one was present on
an autobiographic test of retrograde amnesia that had a wider time
scale. Several explanations for these results are presented, including
one that suggests that extended retrograde amnesia and semantic memory
deficits are in fact one and the same deficit. (JINS, 2005,
11, 40–48.)