What is "anterograde amnesia"

n. (context pathology English) The inability to remember new information from the period beginning the amnesic episode.

n. loss of memory for events immediately following a trauma; sometimes in effect for events during and for a long time following the trauma [syn: posttraumatic amnesia]

Anterograde amnesia is a loss of the ability to create new memories after the event that caused the amnesia, leading to a partial or complete inability to recall the recent past, while long-term memories from before the event remain intact. This is in contrast to retrograde amnesia, where memories created prior to the event are lost while new memories can still be created. Both can occur together in the same patient. To a large degree, anterograde amnesia remains a mysterious ailment because the precise mechanism of storing memories is not yet well understood, although it is known that the regions involved are certain sites in the temporal cortex, especially in the hippocampus and nearby subcortical regions.