Disproportionate retrograde amnesia in a patient with herpes simplex encephalitis

We describe a patient who developed a severe but temporally limited retrogr ade amnesia coupled with a relatively mild anterograde amnesia following he rpes simplex encephalitis. The patient showed a profound retrograde amnesia for autobiographical events extending for about 10 years prior to the dise ase onset. Her knowledge about public events and famous persons was also im paired for this period. An MRI and SPECT demonstrated bilateral medial temp oral pathology. This case represents a further instance of a relatively foc al retrograde amnesia following brain damage. We review other reported case s with focal retrograde amnesia and consider theoretical and neuroanatomica l accounts for the present case. Two factors may account for her amnesic pa tterns: a partial disruption of the store for premorbid binding codes (i.e. , information that multimodal feature representations occurred synchronousl y); along with a relative preservation of the encoding process required to develop new synchronous codes.