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retrograde amnesia

American  

noun

  1. a memory disorder characterized by an inability to remember events or experiences that occurred before a significant point in time.


retrograde amnesia British  

noun

  1. amnesia caused by a trauma such as concussion, in which the memory loss relates to material learnt before the trauma Compare anterograde amnesia

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of retrograde amnesia

First recorded in 1930–35

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

Weronika had suffered a rare complication - unusual retrograde amnesia.

From BBC Feb. 25, 2025

He woke up in a cloud — he felt as if he had been “dropped cold, empty, neutral, cleansed,” as he later put it — with retrograde amnesia.

From Washington Post Nov. 2, 2021

“There are many alternative explanations for these correlations—say, retrograde amnesia, in which the forgetting is due to a brain injury.”

From Scientific American Apr. 6, 2021

Haasan said on Sunday he was “haunted” by the lullaby from the 1983 film Sadma in which Sridevi played a woman with retrograde amnesia, described by many critics as a milestone performance.

From The Guardian Feb. 25, 2018

Psychiatrists explain the case as follows: The thing here involved is retrograde amnesia.

From Criminal Psychology; a manual for judges, practitioners, and students by Gross, Hans Gustav Adolf

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