Impaired recall and preserved encoding in prominent amnesic syndrome: a case of basal forebrain amnesia

We describe a patient who developed amnesia following extensive basal forebrain infarct. He completely recovered from the infarct 32 days postonset. He had poor spontaneous recall and preserved recognition of recent as well as more remote events. Surprisingly, he could recall events in sequence during the postictal amnesic period after recovery. We speculate that encoding and recall may employ different neural systems.