Aggleton & Brown argue that a hippocampal-anterior
thalamic system supports the “recollection” of
contextual information about previous events, and that a separate
perirhinal-medial dorsal thalamic system supports detection of
stimulus “familiarity.” Although there is a growing body
of human literature that is in agreement with these claims, when
recollection and familiarity have been examined in amnesics using the
process dissociation or the remember/know procedures, the results do
not seem to provide consistent support. We reexamine these studies
and describe the results of an additional experiment using a receiver
operating characteristic (ROC) technique. The results of the
reanalysis and the ROC experiment are consistent with Aggleton &
Brown's proposal. Patients with damage to both regions exhibit
severe deficits in recollection and smaller, but consistent, deficits
in familiarity.