Anterograde amnesia is defined as the inability to form new memories after the event.

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Anterograde amnesia centers on the failure to form new lasting memories after the brain event. After such an event, encoding of new information into long-term memory is impaired, so experiences encountered afterward aren’t retained, even though older memories from before the event can remain intact. This contrasts with retrograde amnesia, where memories from before the event are lost. The option describing the inability to form new memories after the event captures this specific impairment in memory encoding. The other labels don’t fit: losing memories from before the event is retrograde amnesia; global amnesia suggests a broad, widespread memory deficit; and complete amnesia is not a precise clinical term for this pattern of impairment.