KC, also known as Patient K.C., is a famous patient in neuropsychology who was diagnosed with anterograde amnesia and temporally graded retrograde amnesia as the result of a motorcycle crash at the age of 30, in 1981. He has intact semantic memory but no episodic memory, caused by injury to his frontal lobe. He was the patient of famous memory researcher Endel Tulving.
He knows facts about himself, but has no memory for events that included him personally. For example, he is unable to describe an event that took place in school that specifically included him; however, he knows that he went to school, and he retains the knowledge that he gained there. Findings from neuroimaging studies of people with episodic amnesia suggest that they consistently have frontal-lobe injuries. However, not everyone with episodic amnesia has experienced brain injury.
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