Types of Amnesia

Dr. Insel describes how insights from research into why we do not retain memories from the first four years of life may help shed light on many aspects of memory.

Retrograde amnesia (RA) is a loss of memory-access to events that occurred, or information that was learned, before an injury or the onset of a disease. It tends to negatively affect episodic, autobiographical, and declarative memory while usually keeping procedural memory intact with no difficulty for learning new knowledge.

Transient global amnesia. Transient global amnesia (TGA) is a neurological disorder whose key defining characteristic is a temporary but almost total disruption of short-term memory with a range of problems accessing older memories.