Amnesia following left medial frontal subcortical hemorrhage: A case report

There has been a controversy as to the contribution of the frontal lobe to human memory function. We describe a 49-year-old right-handed patient with memory disturbance following a left medial frontal subcortical hematoma. Her amnesia was characterized by 1) predominant anterograde amnesia, 2) difficulty in both voluntary recall and recognition tasks, 3) a great number of false-alarm responses in a recognition task, and 4) no confabulation. An MRI demonstrated that her lesion was restricted to the left medial frontal area and anterior cingulate gyrus. This case represents a rare instance of amnesia following damage to the frontal lobe. We speculated that the unique feature of her memory impairment resulted from combined lesions in the medial frontal subcortical white matter and anterior cingulate gyrus. It seems that Papez's cingulate participated in the development of these symptoms.