LONDON, Jan. 16 (UPI) -- British scientists say they've determined people with amnesia have difficulty imagining future events with any richness of detail and emotion.
The study by researchers at the Wellcome trust Center for Neuroimaging in London supports evidence suggesting memories help people visualize the future.
Eleanor Maguire and colleagues studied five patients who suffered from classic amnesia caused by infections that damaged a brain region called the hippocampus. The damage left the subjects unable to recall events although they could remember facts such as the names of their relatives, New Scientist.com reported.
The researchers found all but one of the amnesiacs were worse at imagining future events than people not suffering from amnesia; their visualizations of future events were more likely to be disorganized and emotionless.
Maguire said there's been some anecdotal evidence to suggest amnesiacs have problems picturing future events, but her group is the first to study it systematically.
"The results are actually showing that amnesia is really worse than we thought -- patients are really stuck in the present," she said.
The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
