Neuroscientists compare the memory loss described in Gabriel García Márquez' novel "100 Years of Solitude" to that exhibited by patients with semantic dementia.

The imagination of a literary genius is a powerful instrument. In the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, Colombian author and Nobel prize winner Gabriel García Márquez perceptively depicted collective semantic dementia almost 30 years before the syndrome was recognized by neurologists.

In the book, first published in 1967, García Márquez portrays the fictional town of Macondo's fight against "the quicksand of forgetfulness." The town was struck by an insomnia plague that rendered its victims a devastating symptom: forgetfulness. The story's protagonist, José Arcadio Buendía, attempts to fight the loss of knowledge by labeling the entire village.

Neurologists familiar with García Márquez’ works recently observed that the symptoms portrayed in the novel closely resemble that of semantic dementia (SD). The syndrome progressively reduces conceptual knowledge (semantic memory) in the context of everyday (episodic) memory.