What condition occurs when the hippocampus is damaged, preventing the formation of new long-term memories?

The condition characterized by the inability to form new long-term memories due to damage in the hippocampus is known as anterograde amnesia. This condition affects a person's ability to encode information from their short-term memory into long-term memory, which means that while they may still recall events and facts from before the onset of amnesia, they struggle to remember new information after the injury or damage to the hippocampus. This disruption primarily occurs because the hippocampus plays a crucial role in the consolidation of memories, a process essential for transferring information from short-term memory to a more stable long-term storage.

In contrast, retroactive amnesia involves the loss of memories that were formed prior to the event that caused the amnesia, while transactive amnesia refers to a phenomenon related to the collective memory of groups rather than individual memory loss. Post-traumatic amnesia, on the other hand, often occurs after a traumatic brain injury and can include both anterograde and retrograde amnesia, but it is not specifically tied to the hippocampal function in a manner that directly defines the inability to form new memories as anterograde amnesia does. Thus, anterograde amnesia is the correct term for the condition arising from damage to