Retrograde amnesia for forty years.

We describe a patient who, in the absence of anterograde amnesia, experienced sudden onset of profound retrograde amnesia for the last forty years of his life. The amnesia encompassed all knowledge, including motor skills, acquired during these forty years. There has been no recovery in over eighteen months. His symptoms seem most consistent with a vascular etiology. Current understanding of memory disorders fails to explain these symptoms. It may be that his case represents a previously undescribed disorder.