Revisión del estado actual del campo de la memoria semántica

Abstract

This article discusses the current stnte of research and findings in the field of semantic memory. Emphasis is placed on the new Cognitive Neuropsychology theories that have emerged in the past decade on semantic memory dysfunction
due to neurodegenerative diseases. The general nature of semantic memory and its functional structures are described along with modality-specific, unitary or amodal and connectionist models and cornbinations. We then cite findings from specífic cases, and call for the revision orfine tuning of the models
currently in use. Descriptions of some of the most frequent semantic memory dysfilnctions follow, and the methodological problems are mentioned.