Final answer:
Inability to form or store new memories after an injury or onset of a condition is known as anterograde amnesia, where individuals can't retain new episodic or semantic memories but can often still form new procedural memories.
Step-by-step explanation:
Inability or difficulty forming or storing new memories is known as anterograde amnesia. Individuals with this form of amnesia can often retain and access memories that were formed before the onset of the condition, but struggle to form new episodic or semantic memories. However, procedural memory formation tends to remain intact, demonstrated by improved performance on tasks over time despite a lack of conscious recollection of previous experiences, as evidenced in the case of H.M. whose brain damage from surgery resulted in anterograde amnesia.
Anterograde amnesia is typically caused by brain trauma, which can impact areas such as the hippocampus—key for memory consolidation from short-term to long-term storage. This condition prevents the transfer of information from short-term to long-term memory, thus new experiences and information encountered after the brain trauma or disease onset cannot be retained.
Understanding anterograde amnesia not only encompasses the mechanisms of memory failure but also underscores the complexity and vulnerability of the human memory system. The study of individuals like H.M. and K.C., who have experienced severe anterograde amnesia, continues to provide significant insights into how memory functions and is stored.