Suffering From Severe Anterograde Amnesia

Because of his anterograde amnesia, Mr. Thompson suffered from declarative memory loss; however, his nondeclarative and procedural memories appeared to be preserved. I believe that Mr. Thompson suffered from an impairment of episodic memory and retained his semantic memories because he could reflect common knowledge of the

There are two main dimensions of amnesias. The first cause is physical or psychological; the second proceeds or follows a traumatic event. Most amnesia is a result either from organic or neurological causes (damage to the brain through physical injury, neurological disease or the use of certain drugs), The seriousness of the amnesia depends on the areas in which the brain is damaged. The second dimension is the dichotomy between forgetting the past versus an inability to form new memories. Terry, W. Scott. Learning and memory: basic principles, processes, and procedures. Boston, MA: Pearson, 2009. Print. Retrograde amnesia is not being able to remember events before the disorder. The amount of time that can't remember depends on the severity. Anterograde amnesia is the inability to form new memories, it is usually caused by severe brain trauma.

A 30-year-old man named John has no memory capacity due to hippocampal damage from birth. He still cannot remember most of his past. His family tries to help him by going through old photos and watching home videos. John has to write everything down. Routines help keep him organized and learning is something he has to concentrate on more. He travels by train because of his bad memory. He has traveled by train hundreds of times but has to continue to write down directions. John gets on a train heading to see neuroscientist, Dr. Faraneh Vargha-Khadem of University College London. She discusses her work with him. The hippocampus is crucial to memory. Compared to a normal person’s, John’s hippocampus are half the size and are not automatically registering. Dr. Vargha-Khadem asks him to draw a picture she shows him. He does pretty good. One hour later, she asked him to draw the same design from memory. He could not do it. His ability was completely compromised, she said. John’s memory is stuck in the present and he will not be mentally able to time travel to the past or future.

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.

If the episode is associated with a traumatic event, the amnesia may clear when the individual is removed from the traumatic situation.

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.

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.

Definition: condition where a pt blocks out a traumatic event by memory loss to everything associated with the traumatic event

In the underlying stage, there is no clear evidence of memory trouble and deterioration in brain functions. The individual performs well on exams that test mental abilities known as psychometric test 7 which is similar to those given to measure intelligent quotient. In the second stage, the patient shows gently memory issues with recalling names of friends. The changes at this point is still very small. Once in a while, the patient may put forth a surprising expression, for example, asking about the wellbeing of a friend who everybody knows, passed on years back. Only extensive psychometric testing can figure out if the individual’s mental capacity has changed. By the third stage, there is unequivocal confirmation of memory loss, which may meddle with employment execution, the individual may experience issues contending a job that use to be routine. The person may dodge social situations because he or she understands there’s an issue. In stages four, there is clinical confirmation of memory impedance when the mental status is tested by doctors. The disease has now become obvious to the family. A sign of this stage keeps asking the same question which has already been replied, this make daily companionship troublesome in the light of the fact that his loved ones are baffled. At stage five, the patient shows issues with both later and past recollections, they even forget events that are important like Christmas, birthdays,

Imagine not being able to remember anything for more than a day, an hour, or even minutes. This is the life that Leonard lives every day in Memento. Leonard got his condition when he was attacked by two masked men that were raping Leonard’s wife. One of the perpetrators hit Leonard in the back of the head. Causing Leonard so smash his head into the bathroom mirror knocking him unconscious.

Milner and her students spent so many years studying H.M. because they’d hope to gain new knowledge of the brain and memory. At the age of seven, H.M had been knocked down and started to have seizures at the age of ten. In his mid teens, those seizures were becoming stronger. The stronger the seizures got the less H.M was able to work because they would interfere constantly. The bilateral medial temporal resection procedure which H.M. underwent, resulted in not only controlling his seizures, but it also brought him a lot of other complications like memory impairment. For instance, he could only retain new information for a short term. After so many years of testing, the results were not only an advancement to development of cognitive neuroscience,

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

Memory can be declarative or procedural. A declarative memory would be concerned with experiences and facts, while a procedural memory is related with skills, or 'how to'. A declarative memory is further classified into episodic memory and semantic memory. An episodic memory is based on awareness of a previous experience in a particular situation at a particular time. It is developed throughout childhood. A semantic memory is concerned with the factual knowledge about the world (Tulving 1983,1993,2002). The article initially explains the cognitive neuroscience of the development of the episodic memory formation. Behavioral evidence indicates an episodic memory emerges from childhood through adulthood. Developments in cognitive functions such

Scoville performed a surgery to stop HM’s seizures, but it was later found out that there was damage to the memory. Milner decided to look into the structure of memory, the structures of the brain (hippocampus), and both anterograde and retrograde amnesia.

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.