ABSTRACT
The memory store or the engram is referred to as the long-term memory store. Patients with damage to the long-term memory store (LTMS) have difficulty in retrieving information that they have learned in the past. Short-term memory is marked by the role of a temporary and conscious representation of information that is either yet to be consolidated into LTMS or alternatively a conscious representation of information that is temporarily retrieved from LTMS. Amnesia is a profound loss of memory. It is sometimes referred to as global amnesia because it involves all the modalities, for example verbal material, visual memory and visuo-spatial memory. The reporting of this case resulted in one of the clearest steps forward in the understanding of memory. The advantage for patients with ‘early onset’ temporal lobe epilepsy is explained by the better early reorganisation of language and memory skills, either to the contralateral hemisphere, or sometimes within the same hemisphere in the case of language.
