Amnesia Essay 2

Amnesia Is a disorder that can have complex physical and psychological causes. It can last from a few hours to a lifetime. The common Symptom is an inability to remember the past. The person with amnesia might forget a particular event of time. The amnesia might involve a total loss of memory about the event or period, or might leave a person with fuzzy memories of events that happened before an illness or injury. Amnesia might keep the person only from retrieving old memories of events that happened before an illness or injury and keep the person from storing new memories of events that happened afterward. It is not a normal forgetfulness for example: if a student cannot recall where a notebook was left, that is normal. However, the student cannot remember where the school is, the problem might be amnesia. Everyone forgets once in a while, but it is a special concern for older men and women, who often find themselves forgetting names and details. This too can be perfectly normal, because the ability to retrieve memories often slows with age. Forms of Amnesia: Different Ways to Forget There are two types of memory. Short-term or “working” memory stores information one needs to remember in the next few seconds, minutes, or hours. Long –term memory includes relational and procedural memory. Relational memory is concerned with relationships among objects and depends on the hippocampus. In Amnesia, both relational memory and short-term memory may be impaired. Procedural memory represents memory for single objects or tasks. This helps explain why amnesiacs often remember basic skills and motor function. Several forms of amnesia * Anterograde amnesia is the most common. It is characterized by the inability to store, retain, or recall new knowledge after the event that triggers the onset of amnesia. Patients in this state often cannot remember what they ate for their last meal or events from the immediate past. This is the type of amnesia seen in dementia