The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test is widely used in clinical settings to test for cognitive impairments, such as frontal lobe disorder which has been associated with source amnesia.

- Procedure:

The visuo-spatial component of this test is devised of two sets of 12 identical cards. The figures on the cards differ with respect to color, quantity, and shape. The participants are then given a pile of additional cards and are asked to match each one to one of the previous cards.

- Results:

Patients suffering from frontal lobe dysfunction and ultimately source amnesia, will have much greater difficulty finishing this task successfully through method of strategy.

The verbal fluency test is a widely and commonly used test to assess for frontal lobe dysfunction in patients.

- Procedure:

Participants are asked to generate words beginning with letters that had previously been introduced to them (e.g.: generate a word beginning with 'A' or 'R'). They are given three 1-min trials (one trial per letter). The goal is to say as many different words possible that begin with the given letter.

- Results:

The Verbal fluency test can assess for damage in the prefrontal lobes, which has been associated with patients suffering from source amnesia. Patients with frontal lobe disorder have trouble putting verbal items into a proper sequential order, monitor personal behaviors as well as a deficient judgment in recency. All of these behaviors are required for the proper recall of the source of a memory.

The Gudjonsson Compliance Scale is a self-report instrument that measures peoples' levels of compliance. It focuses on two types of behavior, namely eagerness to please others, and avoidance of conflicts. The scale consists of 20 items using

a true/false format. Examples are 'I give in easily to people when I am pressured' and 'I try hard to do what is expected of me'. After recoding items 17 to 19, a total GCS score varying from 0 to 20 can be obtained by summing the number of true responses, with higher scores indexing more compliant behavior.

As previously mentioned, RA can affect people's memories in different degrees, but testing is required to help determine if someone is experiencing RA. Several tests exist, for example, testing for factual knowledge such as known public events. A problem with this form of testing is that people generally differ in their knowledge of such subjects. Other ways to test someone is via autobiographical knowledge using the Autobiographical Memory Interview (AMI), comprising names of relatives, personal information, and job history. This information could help determine if someone is experiencing RA and the degree of memory affected. However, due to the nature of the information being tested, it is often difficult to verify the accuracy of the memories being recalled, especially if they are from a distant past. Some researchers have found that the time interval after the head injury occurred did not seem to matter. The effect of the memory loss was the same no matter how long it had been after from the injury.

Brain abnormalities can be measured using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography scan (CT) and electroencephalography (EEG), which can provide detailed information about specific brain structures. In many cases, an autopsy helps identify the exact brain region affected and the extent of the damage that caused RA once the patient has died.

There are some aspects essential to the patient that remain unaffected by RA. In many patients, their personality remains the same. Also, semantic memory, that is general knowledge about the world, is usually unaffected. However, episodic memory, which refers to one's life experiences, is impaired.

Another real life problem with RA is malingering, which is conceived as the rational output of a neurologically normal brain aiming at the surreptitious achievement of a well identified gain. Since it is common for people who have committed a crime to report having RA for that specific event in order to avoid their punishment, the legal system has pushed for the creation of a standardized test of amnesia. However, since most cases differ in onset, duration, and content forgotten, this task has shown to be a rather complex one.

Clinically induced RA has been achieved using different forms of electrical induction.

- Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), used as a depression therapy, can cause impairments in memory. Tests show that information of days and weeks before the ECT can be permanently lost. The results of this study also show that severity of RA is more extreme in cases of bilateral ECT rather than unilateral ECT. Impairments can also be more intense if ECT is administered repetitively (sine wave simulation) as opposed to a single pulse (brief-pulse stimulation).

- Electroconvulsive shock (ECS): The research in this field has been advanced by using animals as subjects. Researchers induce RA in rats, for example, by giving daily ECS treatments. This is done to further understand RA.

Confabulations can also be detected using a free recall task, such as a self-narrative task. Participants are asked to recall stories (semantic or autobiographical) that are highly familiar to them. The stories recalled are encoded for errors that could be classified as distortions in memory. Distortions could include falsifying true story elements or including details from a completely different story. Errors such as these would be indicative of confabulations.

Confabulations can also be researched by using continuous recognition tasks. These tasks are often used in conjunction with confidence ratings. Generally, in a recognition task, participants are rapidly presented with pictures. Some of these pictures are shown once; others are shown multiple times. Participants press a key if they have seen the picture previously. Following a period of time, participants repeat the task. More errors on the second task, versus the first, are indicative of confusion, representing false memories.

The Gudjonsson suggestibility scale (GSS) is used to measure interrogative suggestibility. The GSS consists of a story that is read out loud by a test administer. Participants then have to answer 20 questions of which 15 are misleading and 5 are neutral and address factual details of the story. After participants have answered the questions, they receive negative feedback about their performance. They are asked to answer the questions one more time and to be more accurate this time. Thus, all questions are answered twice and in this way several GSS parameters can be calculated. First, yield 1 refers to the number of misleading questions that the participant accepts during the first round (range 0–15). Second, yield 2 refers to the number of misleading questions accepted during the second round (range 0–15). Third, shift refers to the number of changes that participants make in their answers after having received negative feedback (range 0–20). Finally, the total GSS score is the sum of yield 1 and shift, with higher scores reflecting higher levels of interrogative suggestibility (range 0–35).

Many forms of amnesia fix themselves without being treated. However, there are a few ways to cope with memory loss if that is not the case. One of these ways is cognitive or occupational therapy. In therapy, amnesiacs will develop the memory skills they have and try to regain some they have lost by finding which techniques help retrieve memories or create new retrieval paths. This may also include strategies for organizing information to remember it more easily and for improving understanding of lengthy conversation.

Another coping mechanism is taking advantage of technological assistance, such as a personal digital device to keep track of day-to-day tasks. Reminders can be set up for appointments, when to take medications, birthdays and other important events. Many pictures can also be stored to help amnesiacs remember names of friends, family and co-workers. Notebooks, wall calendars, pill reminders and photographs of people and places are low-tech memory aids that can help as well.

While there are no medications available to treat amnesia, underlying medical conditions can be treated to improve memory. Such conditions include but are not limited to low thyroid function, liver or kidney disease, stroke, depression, bipolar disorder and blood clots in the brain. Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome involves a lack of thiamin and replacing this vitamin by consuming thiamin-rich foods such as whole-grain cereals, legumes (beans and lentils), nuts, lean pork, and yeast. Treating alcoholism and preventing alcohol and illicit drug use can prevent further damage, but in most cases will not recover lost memory.

Although improvements occur when patients receive certain treatments, there is still no actual cure remedy for amnesia so far. To what extent the patient recovers and how long the amnesia will continue depends on the type and severity of the lesion.

Approaches used to treat those who suffer from anterograde amnesia often use interventions which focus on compensatory techniques, such as beepers, written notes, diaries or through intensive training programs involving the active participation of the individual concerned, along with their supporting network of family and friends.

In this perspective, environmental adaptation techniques are used, such as the compensatory technique education to training (exercise), organizational strategies, visual imagery and verbal labeling. In addition, other techniques are also used in rehabilitation, such as implicit tasks, speech and mnemotechnic methods.

So far, it has been proven that education techniques of compensatory strategies for memory disorders are effective in individuals with minor traumatic brain injuries. In moderately or severely injured individuals, effective interventions are those appealing to external aids, such as reminders in order to facilitate particular knowledge or skill acquisition. Reality orientation techniques are also considered; Their purpose is to enhance orientation using stimulation and repetition of the basic orientation information. These techniques are regularly applied in populations of patients primarily presenting with dementia and head-injured patients.

When there is damage to just one side of the MTL, there is opportunity for normal functioning or near-normal function for memories. Neuroplasticity describes the ability of the cortex to remap when necessary. Remapping can occur in cases like the one above, and, with time, the patient can recover and become more skilled at remembering. A case report describing a patient who had two lobectomies – in the first, doctors removed part of her right MTL first because of seizures originating from the region, and later her left because she developed a tumor – demonstrates this. This case is unique because it is the only one in which both sides of the MTL were removed at different times. The authors observed that the patient was able to recover some ability to learn when she had only one MTL, but observed the deterioration of function when both sides of the MTL were afflicted. The reorganization of brain function for epileptic patients has not been investigated much, but imaging results show that it is likely.

Before the development of the current tests for the assessment of post-traumatic amnesia (PTA), a retrospective method was used to determine the patient's condition, consisting of one or more interviews with the patient after the episode of PTA was judged to be over. The retrospective method, however, fails to account for the apparent lucidity of patients who are still experiencing substantial disorientation, or the finding that the recovery from post-traumatic amnesia is often characterized by the presence of "islands of memory" (short periods of clarity). A failure to take these facts into consideration may have biased retrospective methods towards underestimating the length and severity of an episode of PTA. Also, the retrospective method relies on retrospective memory, one's memory for past events, which is not very reliable in healthy individuals, and even less so in patients who have recently experienced a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Patients may also unconsciously or consciously bias their answers because they want to appear more healthy or more ill than they truly were, or because of poor insight. The retrospective method is also flawed because there is no standard measurement procedure. Although the retrospective method may provide useful subjective data, it is not a useful tool for measurement or categorization.

Parker and colleagues used a variety of standardised neuropsychological tests in their diagnosis of AJ's hyperthymesia. These included tests of memory, lateralisation, executive functions, language, calculations, IQ, and visual-spatial and visual-motor functions. They also devised novel tests to examine the extent of her memory abilities. These mostly consisted of questions pertaining to specific dates and events in history. Some of her personal recollections were verified with diary entries, as well as by her mother.

More recently, neuroscientist David Eagleman at Baylor College of Medicine developed a free on-line test for hyperthymesia. Participants first give their year of birth, and then are challenged to match dates to 60 famous events that happened between the time they were five years old and the present day. To qualify as potentially hyperthymestic, participants must achieve a score at least three standard deviations above the average. To prevent people from searching for answers on-line during the test, reaction time for each question is measured; answers must be chosen within 11 seconds to qualify for consideration. However, many of the questions are sourced in American culture and test results could have a strong cultural bias against non-Americans.

Although the GOAT has proved useful in acute care, recent research has called attention to some of its drawbacks. The GOAT's assessment of orientation may put too much of a focus on memory as the main mechanism behind orientation. The range of cognitive and behavioral symptoms associated with PTA seems to indicate that the patient's disorientation is more than just a memory deficit. Consequently, it may be beneficial to incorporate tests of other cognitive functions, such as attention, which relate to both memory and orientation.

Another recent study compared the success of the GOAT and the Orientation Log (O-Log) in predicting rehabilitation outcomes, and found that, while the O-Log and the GOAT perform similarly as measures of PTA severity and duration, the O-Log provides a more accurate picture of rehabilitation.

While the GOAT is a useful tool, these results suggest that using alternative methods of assessing PTA may increase the amount of information available to physicians and may help in predicting rehabilitative success. The international cognitive (INCOG) expert panel has recommended the use of a validated PTA scale such as the GOAT or WPTAS for assessing PTA duration in patients with moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury on a daily basis.

A false memory is the psychological phenomenon where a person recalls something that did not happen. False memory is often considered in legal cases regarding childhood sexual abuse. This phenomenon was initially investigated by psychological pioneers Pierre Janet and Sigmund Freud. Freud wrote "The Aetiology of Hysteria", where he discussed repressed memories of childhood sexual trauma in their relation to hysteria. Elizabeth Loftus has, since her debuting research project in 1974, been a lead researcher in memory recovery and false memories. False memory syndrome recognizes false memory as a prevalent part of one's life in which it affects the person's mentality and day-to-day life. False memory syndrome differs from false memory in that the syndrome is heavily influential in the orientation of a person's life, while false memory can occur without this significant effect. The syndrome takes effect because the person believes the influential memory to be true. However, its research is controversial and the syndrome is excluded from identification as a mental disorder and, therefore, is also excluded from the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders". False memory is an important part of psychological research because of the ties it has to a large number of mental disorders, such as PTSD.

Topographical disorientation is usually diagnosed with the use of a comprehensive battery of neuropsychological tests combined with a variety of orientation tasks performed by the participants in both virtual and real surroundings. Performance on certain tests can identify underlying neurological disorders and verify the disorientation as a selective impairment. Brain imaging is used to determine regions of brain damage, if any. Navigational skills can be assessed by tests pertaining to memory, visual-perceptual abilities, object recognition, mental rotation, imagery abilities, and spatial abilities. More direct testing of navigation involves asking the patient to describe a route, read a map, draw a map, follow a route, or point out landmarks.

The existence of repressed memory recovery has not been accepted by mainstream psychology, nor unequivocally proven to exist, and some experts in the field of human memory feel that no credible scientific support exists for the notions of repressed/recovered memories. A survey revealed that whilst memory and cognition experts tend to be skeptical of repressed memory, clinicians are much more apt to believe that traumatic memory is often repressed. One research report states that a distinction should be made between spontaneously recovered memories and memories recovered during suggestions in therapy. A common criticism is that a recovered memory is tainted by, or a product of, the process of recovery or the suggestions used in that process.

The "Working Group on Investigation of Memories of Child Abuse" of the American Psychological Association presented findings mirroring those of the other professional organizations. The Working Group made five key conclusions:

1. Controversies regarding adult recollections should not be allowed to obscure the fact that child sexual abuse is a complex and pervasive problem in America that has historically gone unacknowledged;

2. Most people who were sexually abused as children remember all or part of what happened to them;

3. It is possible for memories of abuse that have been forgotten for a long time to be remembered;

4. It is also possible to construct convincing pseudo-memories for events that never occurred; and

5. There are gaps in our knowledge about the processes that lead to accurate and inaccurate recollections of childhood abuse.

Many critics believe that memories may be distorted and false. Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus questions the concept of repressed memories and the possibility of them being accurate. Loftus focuses on techniques that therapists use in order to help the patients recover their memory. Such techniques include age regression, guided visualization, trance writing, dream work, body work, and hypnosis.

Loftus' research indicates that repressed memory faces problems, such as memory alteration. In one case a teenage boy was able to “conjure a memory of an event that never occurred.” According to Loftus, if a stable person could be influenced to remember an event that never occurred, an emotionally stressed person would be even more susceptible.

Repressed memories are memories that have been unconsciously blocked due to the memory being associated with a high level of stress or trauma. The theory postulates that even though the individual cannot recall the memory, it may still be affecting them consciously, and that these memories can emerge later into the consciousness. Ideas on repressed memory hiding trauma from awareness were an important part of Sigmund Freud's early work on psychoanalysis. He later took a different view.

The existence of repressed memories is an extremely controversial topic in psychology; although some studies have concluded that it can occur in a varying but generally small percentage of victims of trauma, many other studies dispute its existence entirely. Some psychologists support the theory of repressed memories and claim that repressed memories can be recovered through therapy, but most psychologists argue that this is in fact rather a process through which false memories are created by blending actual memories and outside influences. One study concluded that repressed memories were a cultural symptom due to the lack of written proof of their existence before the nineteenth century, but its results were disputed by some psychologists, and the lack of written proof was eventually partially disproven.

According to the American Psychological Association, it is not possible to distinguish repressed memories from false ones without corroborating evidence. The term repressed memory is sometimes compared to the term dissociative amnesia, which is defined in the DSM-V as an “inability to recall autobiographical information. This amnesia may be localized (i.e., an event or period of time), selective (i.e., a specific aspect of an event), or generalized (i.e., identity and life history).”

According to the Mayo Clinic, amnesia refers to any instance in which memories stored in the long-term memory are completely or partially forgotten, usually due to brain injury.

According to proponents of the existence of repressed memories, such memories can be recovered years or decades after the event, most often spontaneously, triggered by a particular smell, taste, or other identifier related to the lost memory, or via suggestion during psychotherapy.

False memory syndrome is a condition in which a person's identity and interpersonal relationships center on a memory of a traumatic experience that is objectively false but that the person strongly believes occurred.

The FMS concept is controversial, and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders does not include it. Paul R. McHugh, member of the FMSF, stated that the term was not adopted into the fourth version of the manual due to the pertinent committee being headed by believers in recovered memory.

Fragmentation of memory is a memory disorder in when an individual is unable to associate the context of the memories to their autobiographical (episodic) memory. The explicit facts and details of the events may be known to the person (semantic memory). However, the facts of the events retrieve none of the effective and somatic elements of the experience. Therefore, the emotional and personal content of the memories can't be associated with the rest of the memory. Fragmentation of memory can occur for relatively recent events as well.

The impaired person usually suffers from physical damage to or underdevelopment of the hippocampus. This may be due to a genetic disorder or be the result of trauma, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Brain dysfunction often has other related consequences, such as oversensitivity to some stimuli, impulsiveness, lack of direction in life, occasional aggressiveness, a distorted perception of oneself, and impaired ability to empathize with others, which is usually masked.

False memory syndrome (FMS) describes a condition in which a person's identity and relationships are affected by memories that are factually incorrect but that they strongly believe. Peter J. Freyd originated the term, which the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF) subsequently popularized. The term is not recognized as a psychiatric illness in any of the medical manuals, such as the ICD-10 or the DSM-5; however, the principle that memories can be altered by outside influences is overwhelmingly accepted by scientists.

False memories may be the result of recovered memory therapy, a term also defined by the FMSF in the early 1990s, which describes a range of therapy methods that are prone to creating confabulations. Some of the influential figures in the genesis of the theory are forensic psychologist Ralph Underwager, psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, and sociologist Richard Ofshe.

Fragmentation of memory is a type of memory disruption pertaining to the flaws or irregularities in sequences of memories, "coherence, and content” in the narrative or story of the event. During a traumatic experience, memories can be encoded irregularly which creates imperfections in the memory. It is also described as a memory that has been jumbled, confused, or repeated unnecessarily.

Childhood amnesia, also called infantile amnesia, is the inability of adults to retrieve episodic memories which are memories of specific events (times, places, associated emotions, and other contextual who, what, when, and where) before the age of 2–4 years, as well as the period before age 10 of which adults retain fewer memories than might otherwise be expected given the passage of time. The development of a cognitive self is also thought by some to have an effect on encoding and storing early memories. Some research has demonstrated that children can remember events from the age of 1, but that these memories may decline as children get older.

Most psychologists differ in defining the offset of childhood amnesia. Some define it as the age from which a first memory can be retrieved. This is usually at the age of 3 or 4, but it can range from 2 to 8 years. Changes in encoding, storage and retrieval of memories during early childhood are all important when considering childhood amnesia. Some other research shows differences between gender and culture, which is implicated in the development of language. Childhood amnesia is particularly important to consider in regard to false memories and the development of the brain in early years. Proposed explanations of childhood amnesia are Freud's trauma theory, neurological development, development of the cognitive self, emotion and language.

Treatment for topographical disorientation has been achieved through a case by case basis. Prognosis is largely dependent on the organic cause. Neuropsychological assessment followed by an assessment of unaffected cognitive abilities can be employed in therapy. Treatment for recovering navigational skills require strengthening unaffected navigational strategies to bypass defective ones.

Amnesia is a deficit in memory caused by brain damage, disease, or psychological trauma. Amnesia can also be caused temporarily by the use of various sedatives and hypnotic drugs. The memory can be either wholly or partially lost due to the extent of damage that was caused. There are two main types of amnesia: retrograde amnesia and anterograde amnesia. Retrograde amnesia is the inability to retrieve information that was acquired before a particular date, usually the date of an accident or operation. In some cases the memory loss can extend back decades, while in others the person may lose only a few months of memory. Anterograde amnesia is the inability to transfer new information from the short-term store into the long-term store. People with this type of amnesia cannot remember things for long periods of time. These two types are not mutually exclusive; both can occur simultaneously.

Case studies also show that amnesia is typically associated with damage to the medial temporal lobe. In addition, specific areas of the hippocampus (the CA1 region) are involved with memory. Research has also shown that when areas of the diencephalon are damaged, amnesia can occur. Recent studies have shown a correlation between deficiency of RbAp48 protein and memory loss. Scientists were able to find that mice with damaged memory have a lower level of RbAp48 protein compared to normal, healthy mice. In people suffering with amnesia, the ability to recall "immediate information" is still retained, and they may still be able to form new memories. However, a severe reduction in the ability to learn new material and retrieve old information can be observed. Patients can learn new procedural knowledge. In addition, priming (both perceptual and conceptual) can assist amnesiacs in the learning of fresh non-declarative knowledge. Amnesic patients also retain substantial intellectual, linguistic, and social skill despite profound impairments in the ability to recall specific information encountered in prior learning episodes. The term is ; .