Profound amnesia and confabulation following traumatic brain injury

Amnesia and confabulation may persist following acute: aneurysmal hemorrhag e of the anterior communicating artery, chronic alcoholic Korsakoff's syndr ome, and late-stage dementia of the Alzheimer type. However, there is a pau city of information regarding the persistence of these symptoms following t raumatic brain injury. We present the case of JL, a 43-year-old male with p ersistent and severe anterograde amnesia for verbal and visual information with co-occurring provoked confabulation which persists well into the chron ic phase of recovery after a severe traumatic brain injury. Neuropsychologi cal testing at 7 weeks post-injury demonstrated severe anterograde amnesia with co-occurring confabulation. Follow-up testing at 9.5 months post-injur y showed persistent and severe anterograde amnesia and provoked confabulati on despite superior non-verbal intelligence and above average attentional a nd perceptual abilities. Late computed tomography showed chronic hypodense: regions in the temporal lobes, bilaterally (L > R), and in the region of t he left ventrolateral frontal lobe. This case demonstrates that anterograde amnesia and provoked confabulation may persist long after the acute phase of recovery after traumatic brain injury, and also supports previous resear ch which asserts that medial temporal lobe damage must be accompanied by ve ntral frontal lobe pathology to produce the amnestic-confabulatory syndrome .