Final answer:
Anterograde amnesia is a form of memory loss where new memories cannot be formed after a brain trauma, but old memories from before the trauma remain. Unlike retrograde amnesia, which affects memories before the injury, anterograde amnesia affects the ability to consolidate new information. This condition often involves damage to the hippocampus and can be caused by serious head injuries, strokes, or TIAs.
Step-by-step explanation:
The student's question refers to a condition known as anterograde amnesia, which is the loss of memory for events that occur after the onset of an etiological condition or agent, usually brain trauma. This is in contrast to retrograde amnesia, where an individual loses memories of events that occurred before the trauma. Anterograde amnesia often involves damage to the hippocampus, which plays a crucial role in transferring information from short-term to long-term memory.
Patients with anterograde amnesia can recall long-term memories created before the injury but cannot form new episodic or semantic memories. They may still be able to learn new procedural tasks, as was famously observed in patient H.M., who could learn new puzzles despite not recalling having seen them before. Trauma-induced memory loss is not just a plot in Hollywood movies but a real and serious condition affecting individuals who have experienced significant head injuries or other damage to the brain.
Additional causes for memory loss can include strokes or transient ischemic attacks (TIAs), which temporarily disrupt blood flow to the brain. Forgetting, a natural part of memory function, can be exacerbated by conditions like amnesia due to various factors, including encoding failure, blocking, and bias.