Selective memory impairment for personally familiar colors following encephalitis.

A 19-year-old man presented with a peculiar memory impairment following non-herpetic viral encephalitis. He was exclusively impaired in generating images for colors of possessions previously well known to him, and consequently these seemed less familiar. He appeared unable to access personally familiar and autobiographical color attributes. Single-photon emission computed tomography and electroencephalogram findings suggest that the right-sided functional abnormalities, specifically in the frontal and temporal regions, were implicated as the functional locus for the patient's unique problem.