A police officer is shot in a gun battle with bank robbers. Although emergency brain surgery saves his life, it leaves him unable to store new information. The officer’s family is applying to the state for compensation for his injuries. When asked to provide a diagnosis of the difficulties he suffers, what will they write?

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The scenario describes a police officer who, after brain surgery, cannot store new information. This specific deficit is characteristic of anterograde amnesia, where new memories fail to form while long-term memories from before the event may remain intact.
Option 1: retroactive amnesia. This would involve difficulty recalling memories formed after a certain event, which is not what the vignette describes; the issue is with forming new memories going forward, not with memories formed after the incident.
Option 2: retrograde amnesia. Retrograde amnesia refers to loss of pre-existing memories prior to some event, not the inability to create new ones, so it does not fit the situation.
Option 3: proactive amnesia. Proactive amnesia is not a standard clinical term used to describe memory impairment; it would imply difficulties due to old information interfering with new learning, which again does not match the described deficit.
Option 4: anterograde amnesia. This option directly matches the described problem—difficulty storing or forming new information after the injury, while older memories may be preserved. Therefore, the diagnosis reflects anterograde amnesia.

SMC 2025 Wnt - PSYCH 1 (1464) - General Psychology (O) Exam #2

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