Transient retrograde amnesia associated with impaired naming of living categories.

A ease of pure retrograde amnesia following mild head injury is reported. The patient, who also showed a deficit in verbal fluency and a living/non-living dissociation in naming during the amnesic period, recovered progressively in about ten days post-trauma. Both a psychogenic and an organic origin could be taken into account. A mechanism (no matter if psychogenic or organic) can be hypothesized, which produces a functional inhibition also involving performances that are unlikely to be affected by psychological factors.