Implicit memory: what must theories of amnesia explain?

In their target article on explaining functional deficits in amnesia, Mayes and Downes (this issue) discuss the relevance of implicit memory. Our commentary considers a number of implicit memory phenomena that may be especially pertinent to understanding the functional deficits of amnesia. Recent evidence suggests that amnesic patients do not benefit normally from an exact perceptual match of stimuli between study and text. We propose that this impairment may reflect one manifestation of a more general deficit in associative binding of information across different brain subsystems. This idea helps to clarify the distinction between implicit and explicit memory, and suggests that studies of implicit memory can help to elucidate the functional deficits in amnesia.