Semantic amnesia with preservation of autobiographic memory. A case report.

A 44-year-old woman showed, following an episode of encephalitis, an impoverished knowledge of the meaning and attributes of words and their referents, in spite of intact command of grammatical-syntactic rules and preserved perceptual abilities. There was also a complete loss of the stock of notions she had acquired over her life and constituting the cultural background of a person, in contrast with normal memory for autobiographic events. The case is interpreted as an instance of semantic amnesia. MRI showed damage confined to the antero-medial part of the left temporal lobe.