Table 1.

Overview of cognitive and behavioral problems in limbic encephalitis and approaches to assess them.

Affected Neuropsychological Functions	Major Deficits	Assessment
Anterograde episodic long-term memory deficits	Reduced learning capacity and/or impaired delayed free recall performance. Concerns verbal learning and memory but often also and sometimes only figural/visual-spatial memory; different from unilateral hippocampal sclerosis not necessarily lateralized (left/right verbal/nonverbal)	A combination of verbal and nonverbal memory tests with proven sensitivity to left and right mesiotemporal lobe pathologies
Accelerated long-term forgetting	Mostly unimpaired memory performance with standard retention intervals (up to 1 h) with subsequent disproportional loss with longer retention intervals	Adding extended retention intervals (e.g., 1 week after learning) to existing learning and memory tests
Retrograde episodic long-term memory deficits including loss of recent circumscribed autobiographic episodes	Insular loss of biographic episodic content, semantic content may be preserved or relearned, often loss of the whole event and not of individual aspects, loss of emotional attachment and autonoetic awareness; loss of visual imagination, reconstruction	A careful self-anamnesis, at best, in combination with an external anamnesis by close relatives
Deficits in attention and executive functions	Non-specific	Tests assessing psychomotor speed, cognitive flexibility, response inhibition, phonemic fluency and working memory
Psychiatric symptoms	Emotional instability, affect incontinence, tearfulness, but also hypoemotionality, and symptoms of anxiety and depression, panic attacks, irritability and psychotic elements	Self-anamnesis and if possible external anamnesis by relevant relatives as well as systematic self-assessments addressing affective disturbances and further psychiatric symptoms