Anterograde Amnesia In The Movie '50 First Dates'

Anterograde amnesia is the loss of the ability to create new memories, leading to a partial or complete inability to recall the recent past (Luke Mastin, 2010). Some symptoms include the impaired ability to learn new information following the onset of amnesia. Recent memories are most likely to be lost, while more remote or deeply ingrained memories may be spared. Someone may recall experiences from childhood or know the names of past presidents, but not be remember what month it is or what was for breakfast (Mayo Clinic, 2014). Throughout the movie, it is evident that Dory shows symptoms of anterograde amnesia. She often has difficulty remembering conversations within minutes of having them, which can explain her bizarre behavior to those around her. In Finding Nemo, Dory mispronounces Nemo’s name several times. Even at the end of the movie, she calls Nemo “Elmo” by mistake. Another example of Dory’s amnesia is at the start of Finding Nemo. Dory bumps into Marlin, who is frantically pursuing a boat that has abducted his son. After a short exchange, Dory helps show Marlin the way it went. After swimming for only a few minutes, Dory completely forgets who Marlin is and why he is following her. Throughout the movie, it is apparent that Dory suffers from Anterograde amnesia. She has trouble

In Memento, Leonard Shelby, who is the main character of the story, has an anterograde amnesia due to the damage to his hippocampus. In fact, it does not mention which part of his brain is damaged in the movie, but in my opinion, his medial temporal lobe is impaired because of the deficits in long-term memory. He was attacked by one of the assailants that had broken into his house, and after the incident, his new memory can last only for 10 minutes. Though amygdala is located close to the hippocampus, it can be said that amygdala, which is closely related to emotion, is not impaired from the quote, “Just for revenge. That's what keeps me going. It's all I have” (Memento, Christopher Nolan).

In Chapter 12 of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Mr. William Thompson suffered from an extreme case of Korsakov’s, also known as Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome (Sacks, 1985, p. 109). According to Anderson (2010), Korsakoff syndrome can cause serious damage to one’s hippocampus and temporal lobe due to habitual alcoholism, resulting in amnesia (p. 201). Similar to HM (Anderson, 2010, p. 200), Mr. Thompson suffered from anterograde amnesia and could remember nothing for more than a few brief moments (Sacks, p. 109). Anderson (2010) states that anterograde amnesia results in the incapability of creating new memories, leading to fractional or absolute inability to remember something that just happened (p. 201). Yet, one’s long-term memories before the incident remain intact; such as when Mr. Thompson recognized his younger brother, Bob, as he walked by the window (Sacks, 1985, p. 112-113). Mr. Thompson and HM both suffered from anterograde amnesia and could remember some long-term memories but not remember new ones, signifying that the neural makeup involved in making fresh memories are diverse from maintaining past memories (Anderson, 2010, p. 202).

Memories are crucial to everything we do every day. Without memories we would not know who is important to us or what we enjoy doing. We use our memories continuously, even when we do not realize that we are. In her memoir Brain on Fire, Susannah Cahalan loses much of her episodic memory from the time period in which she battled Anti-NDMA-receptor encephalitis. Because of this, she loses a portion of her identity, and struggles for a period of time while attempting to find herself again.

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

Recollecting some of life’s experiences can be done very accurately at times where we can depict details even after a long period of time. For patient H.M. this is the exact case. Patient H.M. suffered from severe anterograde amnesia. Anterograde amnesia patients quite often show normal memory for events that have occurred prior to the incident. Therefore, making it extremely difficult to recall or store information after the incident has occurred. H.M. had been knocked down by a bicycle at the age of 7, began to have minor seizures at the age of 10, and had major seizures after the age of 16. Patient H.M. had brain surgery in the early 1950’s around the time he had been 27 years old. The surgery had been done to alleviate severe symptoms

In the movie 50 First Dates one of the main characters suffers from the severe condition of anterograde amnesia. The movie is about Henry Roth who is a wildlife veterinarian in Hawaii, meeting Lucy Whitmore a woman who has a short-term memory loss from an auto accident a year earlier. Henry meets Lucy at a local cafe and takes her out on a date. Henry falls in love with Lucy, but there is one problem when she awakens in the morning, she can't remember him or anything that happened that day. Henry must devise a plan to meet Lucy everyday and try to get her to fall in love with him again and again.

In Still Alice, the main character has memory impairments at the age of fifty. There were a few minor symptoms that were just thought to be because of being overworked and fatigue, but in retrospect point to her disease. For example, forgetting which word to use during a presentation. The recollection was a complete blank. Because of her fairly young age, Alzheimer’s disease was not considered a possibility. Alice believed that it had something to do with her going through menopause, but then she got her menstrual period and decided to go see a neurologist. When Alice did go to the doctor to see what was going on and was diagnosed, it caught

Episodic memory, or personal life events, is affected in the earlier stages of AD. In the beginning, cognitive deficits do not begin showing symptoms in the patient (Vos, 2013). AD prevents those suffering from it to not be able to create or retain any new memories. AD can be linked to the semantic memory, or factual knowledge of an individual, that is stunted when influenced by AD. People with AD are not able to use facts or general knowledge such as connecting an object to a specific category or specifying simple associations. With procedural memory, or the storage for simple skills that become involuntary to an individual without thinking about it, AD impairs the patient’s ability to use this knowledge that they would have otherwise known. Finally, with working memory, a patient with AD is unable to process new memories. It is possible to recall older memories, but at one point, new memories are unable to be encoded. The primary functions of memory that are impacted the most in AD are the episodic memory and semantic memory, followed by procedural memory and working memory. These factors cause the brain to stop being functional to some extent, creating

Anterograde amnesia is a common and distinguished neurological disorder in the psychological and neurobiological field. Media depictions of this neuropsychological disorder are not as common as other forms of amnesia, but it is still incorrectly portrayed. Anterograde amnesia refers to the inability to retain new information, while still having intact memories that occurred before brain damage (Carlson, 2014). There have been several studies that focus on anterograde amnesia and its diagnostic criteria, course, associated features, assessment, etiology, underling neurobiological mechanisms, treatments, and future research.

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

There are parts of this movie that are not accurate depictions of amnesia. For instance, in the film Barrymore’s characters’ father gives the fallacy that time is standing still. Every day they pretend that it’s October 13, 2002, instead of helping her with her condition. The majority of patients who suffer from amnesia don’t have a support system that can give this much time completely to the patient.

The movie 50 First Dates is about a tragic head injury and its effects on memory that takes place in Hawaii. In the movie, the main character, Lucy, experiences a terrible car accident that involved hitting a tree and resulted in short-term memory loss. Lucy had her long-term memory and was able to recall everything prior to the actual accident. However, Lucy was unable to retain and store new memories after a night’s sleep. Each morning Lucy would wake up and think it was Sunday, October 13th, her father’s birthday. Lucy’s father and brother worked hard each night in order to undo any changes for the next day.

Case 1 tells the story of Henry Molaison (HM), a man with no memory. He lost his memory due to the operation of suctioned out the hippocampus to treat his epileptic seizures. At that time, it was not known yet that the hippocampus was essential for making memories. After operation, his seizures were significantly reduced, but Henry suffered a global amnesia. Owen et al. (2007) describes patients with global amnesia as perceptive and attentive but with a total loss of short-term memory and some trouble accessing memories of the recent past. Henry could not learn new things as he quickly forgot everything that he had learned. He could learn at a subconscious level only.