Essay about Amnesia: Who Are You Anyway?

Personal identity is a very controversial aspect of life. Who are we? What defines us? According to John Locke, psychological continuity is what defines our personal identity. Locke discusses the case of the prince and the cobbler to help shape his theory. However, I absolutely disagree with Locke’s theory. Locke’s theory of personal identity creates many problems, such as the duplication problem. By reformulating Locke’s theory of personal identity, we still come across these problems that prove Locke’s theory false.

Hacker, J. S., & Pierson, P. (2016). American Amnesia: How the war on government led us to forget what made America prosper. Simon and Schuster.

Anterograde Amnesia is the inability to store new information after the brain damage has occurred. (Luke Mastin 2010). Anterograde Amnesia is very rare, in fact there have a few cases where the amnesia was "pure". The symptoms and hardship of the person depend on the cause for the memory loss. Some symptoms of Anterograde Amnesia are partial memory loss, having a hard time recognizing relatives or family, feeling of confusion, difficulty taking in new information, inability to remember familiar places, and difficulty in learning and remembering new things.(PHC Editorial Team 2013) Characteristics of Anterograde Amnesia are abnormally small hippocampi bilaterally and elevated hippocampal water.(Mayo Clinic 2014) There are many ways to recognize

Amnesic patients tend to suffer from permanent or temporal, normally partial or total loss of episodic memory and an impaired capacity to form and store new memories. On the other hand, they seem to demonstrate unimpaired performance of behaviours involving prior experiences on tests which do not require any intentional or conscious recollection of those experiences (Schacter, 1992). Hence, most amnesic patients demonstrate the ability to retain and learn new behaviours through priming and conditioning, and acquire new perceptual, cognitive, motor and emotional skills which cannot be traced back to an explicit memory but can be demonstrated implicitly.

Further biological research on the effect of psychological trauma on the neurochemistry of memory may help clinicians distinguish between true repressed memories and false memories in clients who report abuse. However, to date there is no method to determine the accuracy of these memories. Therefore clinicians and the

Amnesia can occur in many different forms depending on the damage caused to specific areas of the brain. Korsakoff’s syndrome is a memory disorder that is caused by a thiamine deficiency and id usually seen by people with heavy alcohol consumption (Breedlove, Watson & Rosenzweig, 2013). Medial-temporal lobectomy is the cutting of areas of the anterior temporal lobe such as the hippocampus and amygdala and this can cause long-term anterograde amnesia (Salmon, Haymon-Abello, Connolly, & McLachlan, 2014). This paper will examine both Korsakoff’s syndrome and medial-temporal lobectomy to compare and contrast the similarities and differences between the two and how they can both impact a person’s life.

A person is a thinking thing that has reason and reflection and thinks of itself as the same thinking thing over time.  John Locke, an English philosopher argued that what makes a person able to identify themselves through time is continuity of one's memories and not the substance of the body.  Bernard Williams, another English philosopher criticized Locke's theory of personal identity through his body switching experiment.  William's argued that personal identity is found on the body and continuity of one's memories isn't necessary for personal identity.  I am going to argue that personal identity is found on continuity of one's memories by presenting Locke's view of personal identity, presenting William's criticism of Locke's theory through his body switching experiments, and providing my own reasons on why personal identity can be found on continuity of one's memories and not the substance of the body.

However, her disorder is practically identical to a real form of amnesia known as anterograde amnesia. Patients suffering from anterograde amnesia lose the ability to recall memories made after the event which caused brain trauma. Anterograde amnesia is caused by damage to the hippocampus which is considered to be a key location for memory. This was discovered through the case of Henry Molaison, who had his hippocampus removed to stop severe seizures. The surgery cured Molaison but left him with acute memory loss. Lucy’s long term memory, sensory memory and procedural memory are all perfectly functioning, the damage is sustained to her short term memory and declarative memory. In addition, only her retrieval process appears to be performing incorrectly which is realistic as legitimate anterograde amnesia sufferers may manifest memories through other means such as the film’s example of dreams and

Understanding the boundaries of childhood amnesia has become a large discussion among researchers. Over the years, researchers have developed multiple theories of the boundaries of childhood amnesia for adults, adolescents, and as well for children by using different methodology of measurement (Usher & Neisser, 1993; Eacott & Crawley, 1998; Macdonald et al., 2000; Peterson et al., 2000; Tusin and Hayne 2010; Wang & Peterson, 2014 & 2016). Childhood amnesia occurs when adults are unable to recall memories from their childhood. Although, this definition is still up for debate on whether or not childhood amnesia only occurs for adults, a specific gender, specific cross-cultural difference, or if the boundaries fluctuate over development (Macdonald et al., 2000; Peterson et al., 2000; Wang & Peterson, 2014). While there are still many variables researcher’s must consider when studying childhood amnesia, there is a common theme that arises throughout the research. Researchers are intrigued in the boundaries of childhood amnesia and how using different methods provides different might alter the perspectives and outcomes for how long childhood amnesia lasts after birth (Usher & Neisser, 1993; Eacott & Crawley, 1998; Macdonald et al., 2000; Peterson et al., 2000; Tusin and Hayne 2010; Wang & Peterson, 2014 & 2016). This literacy research review will discuss how the finding within each research method of measurement changes perspectives on how long childhood amnesia last after

The topic of this article is the subject of false-memories occurrence in children. False-memories occur frequently in adults and is scientific fact. Previous work has shown that false-memories are real and these memories can be difficult for the individual to detect from true-memories. When adults are given a list of words to memorize participants will recall words that were not on the list but were thematically related to the list. However, children have not displayed this strong tendency to produce false-memories and the reasoning is that children have less developed cognitive pathways unlike adults who have more developed pathways and tend to link items together that are often not there, especially when they are powerfully linked to all

The medial temporal lobe (MTL) has long been known to be involved in different kinds of memory processes. The MTL is a region of the brain comprised of the hippocampus and the entorhinal, perirhinal and parahippocampal cortices.1 Lesions to the MTL results in anterograde amnesia. Patients lose both episodic memory, the ability to remember autobiographical events, as well as recognition memory2. Previous episodic memories are not generally lost with MTL lesions, with the exception of some experiences immediately preceding the amnesic event. Patients with hippocampal lesions do not lose the ability to form procedural memories, which give people the ability to habitually perform procedures.

A fundamental aspect of human memory is that the more time elapsed since an event, the fainter the memory becomes. This has been shown to be true on a relatively linear scale with the exception of our first three to four years of life (Fitzgerald, 1991). It is even common for adults not to have any memory before the age of six or seven. The absence of memory in these first years has sparked much interest as to how and why it happens. Ever since Freud (1916/1963) first popularized the phenomenon there have been many questions and few robust empirical studies. Childhood amnesia is defined as the period of life from which no events are remembered (Usher & Neisser, 1993) beginning at birth and ending at the onset of your

Losing one’s memory can be a mysterious affliction, and the causes can be quite complex. Severe memory loss is introduced in author Oliver Sacks’ collection of stories The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and lectures given by professor Jim Davies can help with understanding of some of the concepts introduced in the book. In chapter two, The Lost Mariner, the patient Jimmie is suffering from aspects of both retrograde and anterograde amnesia, which Davies explained as loss of memory of events or facts learned before an event (the event that caused the amnesia), and loss of ability to create new memories after the event, respectively. In more detail, and in relation to our book (here, the target example), retrograde amnesia would consist of any loss of memory that happened prior to an event, such as an injury or onset of disease in Jimmie’s case. Dr. Davies’ explanation of retrograde amnesia helps to understand Jimmie’s case, where in the year 1975 he is unable to recall any events after 1945. As well, the explanation of anterograde amnesia as including symptoms such as inability to form new memories, learn information or tasks, or to recall the recent past is useful when applied to Jimmie’s experience of not being able to recall events that happened even a few minutes prior. Jimmie’s suffering from both retro and anterograde amnesia, as explained by Sacks, results from Korsakov’s syndrome – a destruction of memory caused by alcoholic

Infantile amnesia is when a person is not able to remember events from their early childhood some people would say that language development or memory parts of the brain that did not reach full maturation can be connected with this type of amnesia (Josselyn). The imperfect development of language in adolescent children is likely to be the cause of childhood amnesia in which infants do not have the language capacity to encode autobiographical recollections in a type of manner that their language-predicated adult selves can explain in correct form. At the age of one years old babies are inclined to be circumscribed to one-word utterances, and childhood amnesia soothsays that adults may tend to have very few, if any, recollections of that time in their life. Around

“Come here, come here, come here!” said my uncle Xue, and then I childishly walked beside him. Some people believe that eating snake’s gallbladder be able to boost people’s courage and improve human physique. People love to eat snakes in my hometown, China Guangdong. Snakes are also a traditional Chinese medicine. Therefore, snakes can easily see in restaurants or at pharmacies. Every year, a lot of travelers come to my hometown to watch and taste snakes. Due to my family, I will never forget the fear of snakes.