Bodily perception links memory and self: a case study of an amnesic patient

Episodic autobiographical memory (EAM) is a building block of self-consciousness, involving recollection and subjective re-experiencing of personal past experiences. Any life episode is originally encoded by a subject within a body. This raises the possibility that memory encoding is shaped by bodily self-consciousness (BSC), a basic form of self-consciousness arising from the multisensory and sensorimotor perceptual signals from the body. Recent studies in healthy subjects showed that embodied encoding improves EAM, with the involvement of the hippocampus. However, there are only few imaging studies to date, hippocampal data are not consistent, and the role of hippocampal damage is not understood. We investigated how different BSC states during encoding, modulate later EAM retrieval, in a patient with severe amnesia caused by rare bilateral hippocampal damage. We performed three separate behavioral experiments using immersive virtual reality. The patient showed consistently more difficulties recollecting information encoded in embodied vs. disembodied states, particularly when asked to recall her perspective experienced at encoding. These results contrasted with the usual beneficial effect of BSC on EAM, and significantly differed from controls. These data provide consistent evidence that BSC impacts encoding and later reliving, and shows that the hippocampus is not just a critical structure for EAM, but also for effects of embodiment on memory. Additional fMRI data extend these findings by revealing that hippocampal-parietal connectivity mediates BSC-EAM coupling. Our findings plead for an important role of BSC in EAM, mediated by the hippocampus and its connectivity, leading to embodied memories that are experienced as belonging to the self.