Sacks, O. (2007). A Neurologist’s notebook. The abyss: Music and amnesia. New Yorker Magazine.
Carety, B. (2008).H. M., an Unforgettable Amnesiac, Dies at 82. The New York Times.
Schacter, D.L. (1996). Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past. Chapter 5 & 6.
Sacks, O. (1995). The Last Hippie. In: O. Sacks (ed.). An Anthropologist from Mars. Random House.
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Kristelle Jose
Memory Systems and Amnesia
When reading about the systems and sub-systems of memory, you think about how overwhelming the amount of research and time spent to figure out just a fraction of the answer to how the mind works. Many have reasoned and feared that one day computers and robots will surpass the human race because of their complexity, but from reading the material its evident that nothing is more complex than the human mind. Answering the question of how the mind works goes beyond biology and chemistry, but becomes the ultimate mystery. Kandel wrote, “The ultimate mystery is how each person’s brain creates the consciousness of a unique self and the sense of free will.”
In response to the film we viewed in class whether the methods served ecological validity or not, I believe the studies aimed at answering how remembering affects the person, but in Gwenevere’s case I don’t completely agree as did most of us. If memory shapes us and erasing parts of our memory (like being a victim of rape) would affect our personalities and they way we thought. By depleting her memory, I saw that as taking away her experience as a victim and taking away parts of herself.
I also question patients like Clive and Greg who had deleted memories. Clive knew of certain memories before the 70s. Does that mean that our memory is selective? If so, does selective memory fade as well because Clive’s details in musical concerts, etc. seem to have change or lose details as time progressed? The same could be asked about Greg and his recollection. It seems as though the two patients could make details up Greg especially. So I can’t help, but question whether it’s a skill of listening or imagining? The left side of the brain is responsible for imagination is what I’ve read, so I think it would be interesting to take a look at their brain mages to see the damages to their memory.
Oliver Sacks asks the question of whether or not an artistic form can be characterized as just a skill as Clive Wearing’s procedural memory is seemingly unimpaired. There is a procedure for reading music, but respected musicians generally express some emotion in addition to playing their instrument by the rules. This doesn’t mean that someone can’t play an instrument without emotion. When sight-reading a piece for instance the musician could be completely focused on learning the music rather than expressing the story of the music. There are several ways to go about memorizing music, whether by just playing the piece over and over again or analyzing to further imprint the notes in the musician’s brain. Is the emotion connected with playing the piece also an aid in remembering as an actor may memorize his lines and put himself in a position that is emotional? Clive has a memory span that lasts a few seconds, yet he can still read music and he plays with a “unique style.” It doesn’t seem as if he can play the music without looking at the sheet music, but he can follow the lines fluently as if he’s played the music before. His ability to read music is a skill that he spent many years learning just as someone learns to write. He is capable of putting all he has learned into a string of phrases to make music, but when he wrote in his journal he couldn’t write continuous sentences. He can have a conversation, though his sentences don’t flow in a continuous manner. Thus when he plays music it makes clearer sense than speaking out loud. Perhaps coming up with material from scratch is what made it harder for him to make his words continuous. I’m curious if Clive can read a book as fluently as he can read music. Though Clive can improvise after starting a piece, maybe he could also start to read a book and make up an ending. Music like English is a type of language he has learned and while reading can respond to it. I wasn’t clear if he could play a piece without looking at the music at all, though he surely had to be encouraged to practice by someone placing music in front of him because he wouldn’t know if he had already practiced the piece. He couldn’t remember if he had played a piece until the music was in front of him and he actually started to play. Similarly, he knows his wife Deborah, but only when he sees her. His procedural memory allows him to recall skills and his semantic memory allows him to have a conversation, but maybe another type of memory, his emotional memory allows him to recall Deborah and also helps with his music abilities. Sacks says that “emotional memory is one of the deepest and least understood” types of memory. Perhaps Clive’s emotional connection with music along with procedural memory is what helps him to remember how to play. He is a musician and he can play music like he always has, so even though he can’t recall episodic events, he still has some type of memory that is personal because playing music has always been a large part of his identity.
Meagan Brooks
Memory Systems and Amnesia
In reading through Schacter's examples of memory in individual cases, it becomes apparent that the only thing more frustrating than personally dealing with amnesia is the outsider's attempts to generalize and pinpoint the keys to memory in some clear and understandable way. Schacter explains the distinctions between episodic, procedural, and semantic memory, illustrating how individuals use or lack each type of memory system through the description of patients with varying forms of amnesia. What is most peculiar are the relationships between memory systems. Schacter describes Gene, indicating that, despite a complete loss of episodic memory " he is still capable of gradually accumulating knowledge on the basis of repeated experiences." From this, one might think that the semantic/episodic system relationship is a kind of one-way street. However, he also discusses elderly patients with "semantic dementia", in which "they indicate that semantic memory can be seriously impaired even when episodic memory functions reasonably well." From this comparison it is clear that the relationships between memory systems can not be defined in terms of absolutes. What holds true for one patient is not necessarily true or predictable for the next when dealing with memory. It is difficult to imagine the continuous thoughts of an individual with an impaired memory, beyond what we can ask or record. The very nature of the condition makes me wonder how the experience of not remembering is, in itself, an experience? Why do some systems not only persist, but seem to adapt in small ways, while others fail?
One aspect of these multiple accounts of amnesiac patients that fascinates me is the complete independence of procedural and implicit memories from episodic, autobiographical memories. This seemed to be a constant throughout all the cases we read about, despite differences in how the amnesia had come about- while some were cases of viruses such as encephalitis, others were surgical errors. Despite the widespread differences in what had triggered the onset, it was increasingly apparent that procedural memory is entirely separate from episodic. I think one of the cases that I found most fascinating was that of Clive, the musician, for many reasons. To begin, it gave me a new way of thinking about music that I had not before. Because Clive’s memory for music was procedural, as opposed to having to carefully think about the knowledge he had once learned of music, it shows that music truly is a type of language- just as many amnesiac patients who lose episodic memory can continue to read, without having to individually recall each letter, Clive could work through the music step by step. I also found fascinating the accounts of Clive’s “deads”, and could only imagine what it might be like to feel as if each waking moment is your first. One thing I found interesting was the distinction Schacter made between amnesia and dementia, whereas amnesia is lack of episodic memory but (typically) some retention of semantic memory, and dementia is the opposite. However, having a grandfather who developed dementia, I would really like to look further into some of those claims. I couldn’t help of think of him as I read, and some of the things that fascinated me about the process of his memory loss. The one thing that always stuck out was that, although he could never remember our names, he could always recite quickly both his social security number and the address of the home he grew up in. I find this interesting, now knowing what I do about memory, to try to categorize these two memories as episodic or semantic. Technically, I suppose they are episodic memories as they are autobiographical- they are specific to him as a person and not just general worldly knowledge. This, I suppose, is more characteristic of dementia. However, although he could always recall this address, he could never remember any childhood stories or memories of the house where he grew up. In this case, the memory seems more semantic (factual, numerics) which would be more typical of an amnesiac patient that has lost episodic memory.
In the video, there happened to be one case involving a woman with PTSD after experiencing a sexual assault. One of the effects of the drug given to her was diminishing her emotional connection to the memory of the sexual assault. Would the drug also diminish her other emotions in her other memories? This was not specified in the video. The scientists only mentioned that one of the side effects of the drug was the patient's memory. If she were to recall a happy memory, would she feel less happy now than when she had felt in remembering that same event before taking the drug? Or, if she were to remember a separate event that she felt frustrated or angry with, would she be able to cope with the memory better because the drug allows the patient to slowly become detached? Does the fact that she has post-traumatic stress disorder negate the question?
In one of the Sacks articles, one amnesiac, Clive is recorded as saying that his life is like “one night five years long…” He remembers the implications of being an amnesiac once in a while through his “death” rants, but how is it that he can remember the feeling of being an amnesiac longer than his episodic memory? Does remembering that he is an amnesiac repeatedly mean that the fact becomes part of his implicit memory or is this feeling common in amnesiacs whether or not they are consciously aware that they have memory problems? Greg, the amnesiac in the other Sacks article, was also described as though he was experiencing a loss even though he could not remember that his father had died.
The story of Greg, told by Oliver Sacks in his article “The Last Hippie” is one that brings me to question the relationship between spirit and memory. I wonder what spirit is, if it exists separately from memory. After one’s memory has been impaired in such a way that Greg’s has, is there still a self left over? Or does memory account for one’s entire self?
Before I read the piece I already had an understanding of the extreme importance of memory, that it shapes one’s self, that it basically is one’s self. And the piece further enforced memory’s significance.
But what really catches me off guard is the persistence of Greg’s “self.” At first it seems that Greg has no self what so ever. Because the damage to his frontal lobes prevents him from transferring his perceptions from short term memories to long term memories, he is not able to incorporate his experiences into himself. Therefore, he becomes merely a vessel; nothing sticks. His experiences do not affect him much past that moment that he has them. Sacks describes Greg as being in a daze much of the time, until there’s stimulation.
But even with the damage to his frontal lobes, it fascinates me that Greg is still able to retain some self. Sacks describes Greg as kind. But where does this kindness come from? Memory is what gives people context, places one’s isolated experiences within a realm of what they have already experienced, so that it may all fuse and create the person—and I assumed was also the personality. I have always wondered what the “self,” the spirit comes from, and now I am brought to question it even more. Sacks doesn’t exactly pose hypotheses, but does not ignore the fact that Greg seems to retain some sort of personality despite the severe damage done to his frontal lobes. Things still stay with him, he feels things, and he still has spirit. Even though his father is dead, the sad feeling of it seems to rest with him if not the fact. He still exhibits signs of showing his father’s absence, though he isn’t able to identify that his father is missing, and only hangs onto the explicit information for a short period of time after it is given to him.
I wonder what does constitute our spirit, then. Greg is affected by things, but only affected by them in the moment, and they therefore do not incorporate into his person. However, some things remain.
Whatever this spirit is and wherever it derives from, I appreciate that Sacks acknowledges it. Are there other parts of the brain besides the frontal lobe that incorporate one’s experiences into long term memory, and therefore into whom they are? Or is spirit derived from something entirely different? I wonder what one’s spirit is, where it comes from, and how it relates to memory.
Sacks uses the story of Greg F., an amnesiac, in order to show the impact a brain tumor can have on a person’s memory and personality, especially when the frontal lobes have been damaged. Although the Krishnas probably did not know much about Greg’s personality prior to joining, I found it interesting that they failed to recognize Greg’s symptoms of a brain tumor and instead interpreted his symptoms as spiritual progress. After finding out that the damage done to Greg’s frontal lobes were the cause for his drastic personality change, I began to wonder if the frontal lobes, in people with dangerous personality characteristics, could be altered in order to give them the opposite of their faulty personality trait. This question was later answered in the reading, and showed how tampering with the frontal lobes can leave a person worse off. I was fascinated by Greg’s memory of songs, but I think this had something to do with his love for music prior to his tumor. As we have seen in the readings so far, things that are meaningful to a person, or have emotional importance and value, are often retained easier than things that one finds less meaningful. Throughout the reading, I wondered if Greg’s acid trips had an affect on how he recalled the memories he did have of the sixties. Although H.M.’s amnesia did not have the same affect on personality like Greg’s amnesia did, Dr. Thomas Carew identified H.M.’s amnesia as causing him to lose his identity, something Greg still sort of had. Although their amnesia had different after effects, it was interesting that both Greg and H.M. still remembered things from the beginning of their lives.
The connection between a loss of memory and a loss of identity was perhaps the thing that stood out the most in these readings because it is what I have most trouble understanding. Thomas Carew said, “What H. M. lost, we now know, was a critical part of his identity.” This I understand. The people one interacts with, the things one learn how to do, habits, are all centred on the idea of remembering. One has a point of view because one can remember our interactions, the things we learn in school and the news we read. So when one loses their ability to remember these things, does one also lose their identity, their ability to be “themselves”?
The video we watched in class discussed how our ability to process the past enables us to think about our futures. I suppose that this is one way one can construct an identity, by thinking about our goals, our futures. Medical research would suggest that H.M. and Greg are unable to picture their futures or have a concrete idea of what is happening in the present because they cannot remember their pasts. However, I do not completely understand whether this means they have lost their identities. Perhaps the people they once were are not there anymore, but perhaps they are just different people, with new identities. H.M. led most of his adult life completely unable to form new memories, yet he was still able to live his life, able to go about his daily activities, even though he might have needed some help. Greg, also unable to remember his past beyond a certain point, was also able to lead his life in a fairly “normal” manner. Their inability to remember became their identity.
I am certain this conclusion is not completely accurate, but it seems that the people H.M. and Greg were had their identities, they were just different from the identities they had previously. Does this mean that their idea of what it means to be a person is different? Greg had no idea he was blind, and this obviously changed the person he was but perhaps this also added to his identity instead of just changing it, or taking it away.
I’ve been considering the conversation we had after class concerning Genevieve’s case and whether or not ‘damping-down’ traumatic memories through the use of medications is ethical. I agree wholeheartedly that memories, however horrific, shape who we are and how we interact with the world, and I am unconvinced as well that Genevieve’s cognitions, such as her fear of people and apprehension about leaving her apartment, would necessarily dissipate even as the memory was toned down. I do think however, that if Propranolol can reduce the intensity of her experience as PTSD forces her to relive her attack, then it’s a viable option. Perhaps CBT will actually be more beneficial to her in conjunction with pharmacotherapy than it would on its own, though I agree that Propranolol is by no means capable of ‘curing’ her. Her trauma has already so significantly altered her sense of self and the world that I feel altering it further may not actually be bringing her farther from herself. As we learned, memory is malleable and recall reshapes it each time, so I wonder to what extend Genevieve’s flashbacks are in fact retramatizing her to a greater extent each episode. Anything, be it medication or therapy, that could ease some of this horror for her must be desired at this point.
I started researching Propranolol further and was disturbed to learn that it’s actually prescribed as a treatment for migraines in children. I can’t imagine that a drug which alters memory in adult brains could be without adverse effect when administered to a developing brain.
I’m also now wondering about the ethical dilemmas of a somewhat reverse situation. Often people who suffer trauma will develop dissociative symptoms, including fugue, or even amnesia surrounding the event. If we view it as unethical to try to stifle the experience of memory, then how should we feel about attempts to resurrect the repressed or forgotten? Treatments such as EMDR are aimed directly at doing such things, and I’m just curious about the implications this has for the argument against pharmacotherapy to alter memory.
Oliver Sacks’ “The Abyss” follows the account of Clive, a musician whose episodic memory was rendered incapacitated by encephalitis. This case particularly grabbed my attention for a number of reasons. Clive was completely unable to recall anything beyond a few seconds. Clive did have full use of his semantic memory -a fact which would seem useless given the absence of episodic memory, but in fact gave him an enormous advantage. Clive was able to engage in conversation. He stuck to subjects which he “knew” but did not remember, a differentiation I coming to recognize. Sacks shows how Clive’s amnesia destroyed all of his earlier memories as well as his ability to retain new ones. What struck me as particularly fascinating was while Clive had never heard of JFK, and while he seemed to not remember his days as musician, he was infallibly able to recognize and name his wife Deborah and his children. Each time he saw his wife, it was as if for the first time in decades. My side note questions “does one remember only the most “important” memories? The strongest?” Clive is able to play music that he knows (but does not remember learning) with his wife and it is in this world they connect again-“…their shared love for music has engraved itself in him…so deeply that his amnesia, the most severe amnesia ever recorded, cannot eradicate it.” (Sacks, p. 6) Is it possible that love can be so deep or particular incidents may hit so close to home that they can never be erased? If Clive and Deborah had been casually dating, would this memory have stuck with him so closely?
Benedict Carey covers the obituary of Henry Molaison (HM), who was the victim of the removal of two-thirds of his hippocampi. HM suffered with symptoms not so different from Clive who helped pave the way for the study of explicit and implicit memory disorders. HM was subject to a test not so dissimilar from one which Sacks recounts later. HM was given a test where he was to trace a line between two outlines of a star while watching his hand in a mirror. Dr. Milner, who administered the test, disclaims that this task is difficult for anyone at first. HM repeated this test over and over and each time he had no recollection of having tried once before. With practice, HM was finally able to complete the task, “Huh, this was easier than I thought it would be.” Sacks traces the story a Dr. Edouard Claparede who wanted to test this implicit memory. Claparede would prick a severely amnesic woman with a pin hidden in his hand when they shook hands. The woman began to withdraw her hand before Claparede was able to prick it again. She had no recollection of being pricked, she simply associated the hand and negativity unconsciously. This made me feel a bit ashamed to think of all the times I ignored my niece when she wanted to play when deep emotional associations are being made in the limbic system the whole time (including in childhood). Shame. Do we all form these implicit memories as children and does how we treat children as infants come to affect our relationship with them later? Sacks states that “these emotional memories may determine one’s behavior for a lifetime”. Perhaps this is why we reach for certain comfort foods over others. Is there no age limit to continue engraving these powerful memories and if not, does the magnitude of the memory (i.e. the emotional attachment to the memory) dictate its potency in the mind later?
While many say that amnesiacs such as Clive, Greg, and H.M. are without a soul or inner being, lacking consistency, depth and “autobiographical” history, it is interesting to consider that they may be more alive and, although not aware of it, more themselves than any of us, even if only in the brief moments they are playing music, conducting an orchestra, or fervently discussing their favorite 1960s band, the Grateful Dead. Although the cause of the amnesia varied with each patient in that it was either due to brain surgery to correct seizures before it was discovered that the hippocampus was essential to episodic memory, a work-related accident and a brain infection known as encephalitis, all three of the men could not recall much of anything before the damage to the memory systems inside in the brain had occurred. Unable to recount their past, or much of it, without close instruction, and often left to their own devices living in psychiatric hospitals, except for H.M. who somewhat unknowingly dedicated his damaged brain to science, each of the three men lived their lives more so in the present than I think anyone without amnesia is capable of doing. Clive is perhaps the best example of this because his memory is erased every few seconds, however, he astoundingly retains his love for his wife and his skillful talent in editing, playing and conducting music. Basing his existence on nearly those two factors alone, he is so entirely conscious and himself while experiencing or discussing these things because there really isn’t a future to live for without the ability to plan. Much the same, Greg’s amnesia left his being entirely in the present. He appeared indifferent to the future and could remember almost nothing after the 1960s when he dropped out of high-school, began dropping acid, listening to Allen Ginsberg in Central Park and religiously following the Greatful Dead. After discussing these few articles with some friends I found a constant. One remarked, “I’d love to trade brains with him,” in response to Greg remembering the Dead playing only a year ago when in fact it was more than a decade. The desire to swap memories with Greg was less in the sense that the 60s were probably an enjoyable time, and more so in that so many of us wish we could live our lives more in the present than we allow ourselves. Caught up in the stresses of relationships, academia, and daily life, and often concerned with the impressions we are putting forth, I find it easy get caught up inside my head thinking about what is to come instead of what is happening right now. Should one envy the amnesia of another and his ability to live for the present? Probably not, especially when those moments of clarity are so rare. Nevertheless, in their often seemingly empty shells, I feel their is so much depth and story to be told, so much everyone could learn from.
Juliana Shadlen
How Does Your Memory Work?
(Film from class)
I couldn’t help but notice that in this film all the people who participated in each study including the babies were white. They also seemed to be of a similar economic status, that I cannot say with certainty. I wondered why each experimenter was so confident in their results and moreover why they felt that the conclusions they drew could be used to explain the whole of humanity. When in fact they did not seem to reflect the world as we know it in their experiments. These were the biases I noticed at first.
Beyond this I was able to formulate some questions. I have always wondered about childhood amnesia. A paranoid thought, that I can’t seem to escape, is that we were all wronged or abused in some terrible way which caused us to block out the memory of ourselves before the age of four or five.
One researcher claimed that at the age of 25 we reach our memory’s peak performance and then deteriorate from there. Of course we have to take into count the spikes in either direction throughout our lives. But it puzzled me that in the same film another researcher (or voice-over) claimed that it wasn’t until the age of 27 that our memory would start to fade. Perhaps both statements are true and we can look forward to a great two or three years of high performance memory in our mid to late 20’s.
I find it interesting that our sense of self should dictate the concept of autobiographical memory. Which in turn leads me to ask if it is possible for us not to have a sense of self and yet still document or recite our own autobiographical memories?
The Harvard researcher named Donna who studied the connection between our past memory and our thoughts of the future intrigued me. If these two distinct ideas have similar neural patterns then what use could this connection be? If we can prime a person and manipulate their perception of their past, than can we also ultimately affect their perception of their future? How do these concepts result in mental time travel?
My last thoughts are to do with John, 53, afflicted with Alzheimer’s. It disturbed me that his wife and him kept referring to his running as what kept him happy or functioning. They kept repeating the phrase, “He has his running.” One of the psychologists even said that losing one’s ability to “think” leaves one with “nothing.” This outraged me. There should be a distinct separation between religion, philosophy, and science or more specifically psychology. But, to say that someone is no longer a person or human because of their brain’s dysfunction really grates my cheese! This may be because my mother has dedicated so many years to researching Alzheimer’s and caring for people afflicted with it. I still find it unnerving to hear a scientist make such a bold statement about what he/she knows very little of. I am talking about the soul or something that isn’t just found in the brain.
Also I very much enjoyed listening to the narrator John Hannah. I dug his accent.
http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/galleries/most-relaxing-games-in-the-world/
A concept in the New York times article about Henry Molaison and with his story in general that interests me is the concept that amnesiacs have lost a critical part of their identity through brain damage and how even the smallest damage to the brain can cause such drastic changes in one’s identity and tamper with its extreme fragility. When HM was nine he banged his head after being hit by a bicycle rider. What is so devastating about HM’s story is that it wasn’t his accident that caused his amnesia. After the accident he blacked out frequently and had series of convulsions, so he underwent a procedure to cure this that as Schacter explains, removed structures deep within the inner parts of the temporal lobes on both sides of his brain, including most of the hippocampus. His seizures stopped, but he was unable to remember anything that happened to him after the operation, because without the hippocampus, he only had his short-term memory and couldn’t hold onto thoughts. I wonder if HM even knew when he underwent the surgery what the outcome was going to be, or if the surgeons even knew.
In a similar but more extreme circumstance with David Jane, a British artist, started with a bad headache that turned into a coma and then he woke up remembering absolutely nothing about his past. He was unable to speak and had lost the ability to read. The cause of this was that he contracted herpes simplex virus that eventually reached his brain destroying most of his left hemisphere. What is incredible about his story is that even though he couldn’t remember anything about his past, his right hemisphere was still intact therefore he managed to teach himself again how to read a write and found that he could still paint because he had no problem remembering visual designs and spatial locations. I believe that it is possible that there is a spiritual aspect to this story also, removed from all scientific factors, in that David was miraculously able to paint again and re-visit his passion, not ever knowing that it used to be a huge part of his life but somehow knew while re-visiting it, that it meant something to him. Therefore, even though his past was lost he was still able to regain his identity as an amnesiac.
As it seems with most of these amnesic patients, like Frederick, they have no explicit memory of recent experience but they still have their general knowledge of the world and their general level of intelligence. I find this concept so baffling, that when Frederick was shown words and pictures, he didn’t know what they were and could not say what he did the day before, however he could remember all he ever knew about golf when he went and played with Schacter. What I do not understand is that if Frederick needed episodic, semantic and procedural memory in order to play a game of golf (which he was able to do) that would require long-term memory, which he did not seem to have. What shows that he had a short-term memory was that he could only hold his recollection of a tee shot in short-term memory. If there were any passage of time or any interference that occurred during his short-term memory capacity, it would cause him to forget what he had just done. I understand that the reason amnesiacs like Frederick cannot hold long-term thoughts is because the hippocampus is not there to hold onto them. However, what perplexes me is that wouldn’t Frederick remembering how to play golf be considered a long-term memory? He was perfectly capable in remembering everything about it but couldn’t remember that he had been to the golf course they were at many times before.
The articles about Clive Wearing and H.M. aroused my curiosity about their ability to be able to remember certain events and people before their brains affected. These two individuals could talk about the past without hesitation, as though they were never hit with amnesia. Sacks points out that these events might only reflect their knowledge about them rather than their actual memories of them. Does this mean that people with amnesia remember events that happened in their lives better because people around them planted that knowledge in them when they were younger? Does their knowledge about things remain forever and their memories totally forgotten? Does this mean that knowledge is easily remembered regardless of whether they are aware of it? Clive was asked to play a piano piece but denied he played it before. However, when put to action, he played the piece fluently, and at times, improvising as he played. Although he had no memory of playing the piano, when put to action, he did not hesitate. If he lost his procedural memory, would he still be able to play the piano when put to action?
What I found very interesting was that although they had amnesia, Clive and H.M could pick up new knowledge of actions when given to them repeatedly. When Dr. Milner gave a series of trials to H.M where he had to trace a line between two outlines of a 5 point star, each time was a whole new experience but he was unconsciously working his motor-learning memory and this can be proven when he became proficient with the task. Does this mean that even though we have lost our memories, our procedural and motor learning memories are always intact?
I also found that amnesic patients have very negative attitudes as they do not know what is going on and can only remember a situation for a short span of time. From what I understand, they do not have confidence in themselves as they think they cannot perform a task when asked to. Also, some of them, for instance, Clive, feel empty inside because every time they faced a waking moment, it was as if they were unconscious for a long time and did not know what was going on. They feel lost in life.
What I also found very interesting was Clive's ability to remember and recognize his wife, Deborah every time he met her. I question whether he remembers her when she is not with him. Although the article does say that he would call her when she was not with him, I wonder, if he was left alone for a while, would he remember he had a wife? I also wonder what impact Deborah had on him that made her his lifeline, that she is the one he remembers the most regardless of his memory failure.
I also found that different places had different impacts on amnesic patients. Clive was extremely depressed when put in a psychiatric unit. Although he could not recognize his room every day, he was not happy. However, when moved to a small country residence where he could move freely and was paid more attention to, he became happier and more sociable. He was also taken off most of his heavy tranquilizers. From my understanding, even though amnesic patients have no memory of where they are put, their motor learning memory allows them to unconsciously familiarize themselves with their surroundings. Furthermore, do tranquilizers affect their emotional stability?
From what I have learnt, amnesic patients might not have any memories of the current happenings around them but they unconsciously implant new knowledge into their memory. That is why they will deny they know anything you ask them but when put to action or when they talk freely,they are able to perform the new tasks implanted into their memories.
My final question is, can amnesia be cured?
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/01/28/memory.research/index.html
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