Amnesia

Amnesia is a condition in which memory is impaired or lost. Memory in this context refers. The causes of amnesia has traditionally been divided i. Functional causes are psychological factors such as mental illness, PTSD or defenses in psychoanalytic terms. Amnesia may also appear as spontaneous episodes in cases of transient global amnesia.

Forms of amnesia

In anterograde amnesia, the ability to form new memories through learning by heart is impaired or lost. A person may be constantly forget the information, people or events after a few seconds or minutes, because the data is not successfully transferred their short-term memory conscious memory of long-term stable.

In retrograde amnesia, with pre-existing memories will be lost conscious memory that the usual oversight. A person may be able to remember new things that occur after the onset of memory loss (as opposed to anterograde amnesia), but can not remember some or all of their lives and identities before the onset.

Furthermore, the terms used to classify models of symptoms rather than specific reasons (etiology). Both groups amnesia can occur together in the same patient, and often the result of the effects of drugs or damage to the brain regions most closely episodic memory medial temporal lobe, particularly the hippocampus.

For example, mixed back and anterograde amnesia may be a motorcyclist was driving a motorcycle can not remember, before his head injury (amnesia back), and he can not remember the department, where he was told he had discussions with the family over the next two days (anterograde amnesia).

The effects of amnesia can last long after the condition has disappeared. Some patients say that their amnesia is the evolution of neurological disease to be as a psychological state where they lose confidence in their own memory and accounts of past events.

Another effect of some forms of amnesia may be detrimental to the ability to imagine future events. A 2006 study shows that future experiments designed by amnesics with bilateral hippocampal damage lacked spatial coherence, and the authors speculate that the hippocampus may be responsible for the binding of the various elements of experience and relive the past when or imagine future.