Dissociation between learning and remembering in organic amnesia

IN Korsakoff's disease and certain other cases of organic amnesia there may be profound disturbance of memory with little or no other intellectual disturbance. The nature of this memory defect is controversial and in particular there is disagreement about the stage of the memory process which is impaired. There is evidence in support of three possibilities1–3. Information might be inadequately acquired, maintenance of information in store might be defective or information might be inadequately retrieved from store. The results reported here suggest that inadequate acquisition is the most likely cause of the amnesia in Korsakoff's disease.