A PSYCHIATRIST has told a murder trial jury that a man's vague memory of events surrounding the death of his wife were typical of a condition known as dissociated amnesia.

Dissociated -or "hysterical" - amnesia often affects people involved in traumatic events such as extreme violence, accidents or unexpected bereavements, a court heard yesterday.

The jury in the trial of jilted husband Michael Luke heard that the condition could include complete memory loss of an unspecified time and patchy recollection of events.

Consultant forensic psychiatrist Dr Rajesh Nadkarni said: "The reason the mind does this is to protect the individual from those memories which, otherwise, would be too difficult to bear."

Luke, 45, said he had no recollection of the hammer attack he launched on his wife, Johanna, 37, at their marital home in Willington, County Durham, last summer.

But the prosecution said his amnesia could be feigned because he was able to tell the emergency services and his family what he had done only moments after he fatally injured his wife.

After his arrest, landscape gardener Luke was interviewed by both police and psychiatrists and said he could not remember the killing.

He told Dr Steven Barlow that he recalled a confrontation and then "bizarre" experiences, and little else apart from the flashing lights of a police car, until he woke in a mental hospital days later.

Consultant forensic psychiatrist Dr Barlow said hysterical amnesiacs often talked of a complete blank for a time, but told the jury: "That is not what Michael Luke described to me.

"He described a number of rather bizarre perceptual experiences -things appearing to move in slow motion, the room changing size, a perception that he was caught in a maze and unable to get out and something about chasing birds.

"I think it is possible that he may genuinely not be able to remember certain details of certain events around the time of the killing.

"I am concerned about the fact that the defendant then appears to have extended this period of amnesia beyond that which one might reasonably assume to be related to the original traumatic events and, for me, that casts doubt on his account of the recollection of events."

Earlier, defence expert Dr Nadkarni said people with genuine amnesia often called the police and made no attempt to avoid capture while remaining at the scene of their crime.

Luke denies murdering Johanna on August 28, but admitted manslaughter on the grounds of provocation after a series of alleged attacks and taunts about him being "a pathetic excuse for a man".

In the hour before her death, Luke learned of his wife's affair with paramedic Mark Cole and had Johanna's wedding ring returned to him.

The jury is expected to retire to consider its verdict today.