Retrograde amnesia in patients with rupture and surgical repair of anterior communicating artery aneurysms.

The retrograde amnesia of patients with memory loss related to rupture and surgical repair of anterior communicating artery (ACoA) aneurysms is compared with the retrograde amnesia of temporal amnesic patients and nonamnesic control participants. Two tests which focus on popular culture but which differ according to extent of news exposure and the cognitive processes necessary for task performance were used to measure retrograde memory. ACoA patients demonstrated more significant retrograde memory problems than did nonamnesic controls; however, the severity and pattern of their memory loss was less severe than that seen in association with temporal amnesia. Different factors influenced the remote memory loss of respective groups: ACoA patients' problems were related to impaired lexical retrieval whereas temporal amnesic patients had problems secondary to both retrieval and storage deficits.