Anterograde Amnesia is characterized by the inability to form new memories after the injury.

• A. Inability to form new memories after the injury
• B. Deficit in memory retrieval for memories prior to the injury
• C. Loss of memory for events prior to injury
• D. Inability to recall memories after a period of time

Answer: (A)

Encoding impairment after injury defines this condition: the person cannot form new long-term memories after the event, even though attention and the ability to hold information temporarily may be preserved. The hippocampus and surrounding medial temporal structures that consolidate new experiences into lasting memories are damaged, so new facts, events, or experiences fail to be stored. Older memories from before the injury typically remain accessible, which distinguishes this from retrograde amnesia. The other options describe different memory problems—retrieval of pre-existing memories, loss of pre-injury memories, or forgetting that isn’t tied to a failure to encode new information.