Implicit memory and new semantic learning in posttraumatic amnesia

Whether cognitive rehabilitation should be begun in patients with closed head injury before posttraumatic amnesia (PTA) has resolved has been a matter of debate. This article reports two studies that demonstrate that PTA patients are capable of learning during PTA. The first study establishes that PTA patients show significant priming in an implicit stem completion task. The second study indicates that PTA patients can learn new semantic information using the method of vanishing cues. These results suggest that some memory systems remain functional during PTA and that early interventions may be beneficial.