To test the hypothesis that memory disorders of subcortico-frontal dementia result mainly from inefficiency of retrieval processes of stored information, we compared verbal learning in 15 patients with progressive supranuclear palsy, prototypical of "subcortical dementia," in free (California Verbal Learning Test) and controlled (Grober and Buschke's Test) encoding situations, with that of 19 controls, matched for age and level of education. The progressive supranuclear palsy patients showed memory deficits characterized by impaired immediate memory span, disturbed learning and consistency of recall, and abnormal number of false alarms at recognition, which were dramatically alleviated by controlled encoding associated with cued recall, using the same semantic cues. This memory profile was markedly different from that of patients with senile dementia of the Alzheimer type (n = 15), characterized by more rapid forgetting and less improvement in the controlled situation. Instead, it was similar to the memory pattern of patients with Parkinson's (n = 15) and Huntington's (n = 15) diseases. These results show a similar profile of memory disturbance in disorders involving damage to the striatofrontal system and suggest that the cortical and hippocampal lesions of PSP patients are insufficiently severe to interfere with the specific memory profile characteristic of the disease.