Tanvi Vidyala, Week 13: Amnesia
I sometimes think about the fact that there will never be anyone again who will know exactly what I know, have exactly what I have, know exactly who I know, and be exactly who I am. The same applies to everyone reading this of course. The thought is both harrowing and comforting to an extent. Our ability to form specific memories is what helps us find a purpose for each little action we take.
Not everyone is as lucky as us though. You may have seen the movie Finding Nemo or its sequel Finding Dory, featuring our favorite. In these movies, the character Dory is faced with short-term memory loss or the psychological term anterograde amnesia. Anterograde amnesia is the inability to form or hold new memories for more than a short period. As you may be able to tell, Dory can remember how to perform basic actions like swimming, talking (fish can’t talk, but it’s a Pixar movie), and more. However, she cannot remember basic facts like the name of someone she just met or what she ate during her last meal. This is called explicit memory, or the recollection of facts, events, and concepts.
In Finding Nemo we aren’t told how anterograde amnesia formed in Dory. In our world, it can form due to an injury, illness, or malpractice resulting in damage to the medial temporal lobe, the part of the brain associated with forming and storing episodic memories. Other causes of anterograde amnesia have been strokes, alcoholism, drug use, and brain trauma, all of which have the potential to alter parts of the brain enough to cause permanent damage. In my AP Psychology class, we learned about a patient given the alias HM who was one of the first recorded examples of anterograde amnesia and developed it as a result of neurosurgery to help control his epilepsy in 1953. After his surgery, he could never again form a new memory without forgetting it shortly after.
Now I’ve mostly discussed anterograde amnesia or short-term memory loss in great depth. Another form of amnesia that tends to be very well known across pop culture is retrograde amnesia or the forgetting of past explicit memories. This can be due to an illness; a big bonk to the head as seen in cartoons can be a perfectly reasonable cause for amnesia. Though a second bonk to the head unfortunately won’t cure it. Every person on earth has a form of anterograde amnesia. Don’t think I’m serious? Try to recall a specific event from before your second birthday. Generally, most people slowly lose all their memories from the first three years of their life by the time they are around ten. This is technically a form of retrograde amnesia but it happens naturally rather than because of an injury
Our ability to form memories is one of the greatest gifts we have and I am thankful every day for the memories that I recall, the people I know, and everything I have (not very much who I am yet, but we’re getting there).
Sources
https://www.verywellmind.com/an-overview-of-anterograde-amnesia-4581313
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20131015-a-blow-to-the-head-cures-amnesia
https://www.healthline.com/health/amnesia#types
Hi Tanvi! I don't know if this is canon, but I thought that Dory had amnesia because of the trauma of losing her parents at a young age. I watched Finding Dory so long ago that I don't really remember if they actually explained it or not. My parents say they remember this one earthquake in their childhood city from when they were three years old and how they had to camp outside for days with other citizens, and they were making fun of me for not being able to remember anything from back then. I don't know if they remember it because it was a natural disaster and that its a significant event, or they just don't suffer from childhood anterograde amnesia.
ReplyDeleteHello Tanvi! I also wrote about finding Nemo as well as Dory in my blog. To see another post with the same movie was a bit of a shock. Nonetheless, short-term memory loss seems to be one of the worst things that could ever happen to somebody: imagine doing anything in your life just to forgot it hours later. While it might work well for tests I fail, nothing I do right in my life would be remembered. Some would even consider retrograde amnesia to be better, for you can just create another life. Imagine knowing you lived a life before, but you don't know anything about it. A half-existence, with an unknown history.
ReplyDeleteHi Tanvi, I really learned a lot from your blog about the various different types of amnesia. Regardless of what type though, amnesia would absolutely suck. I believe that our memories are one of the most important aspects of our identity and shape us. Without such memories, I feel like we would feel somewhat empty and hollow, because our memories make us who we are and help influence our decisions and life choices. I can not imagine the difficulty of living in this world without knowing who I am or what I have done in the past. I think anterograde amnesia would be even worse because it would be so difficult to make and maintain friendships or personal relationships, when you would later forget them. It would also be so horrifying to wake up one day, with your past memories wiped clean, which is what it must feel like for people who suffer from retrograde amnesia. But perhaps, retrograde amnesia can also enable a person to form a new and better life, free from the chains that their past places on them. In any case, living with amnesia would definitely be difficult, and I am grateful to have a healthy memory.
ReplyDeleteHey Tanvi, memory and amnesia has been a very interesting topic for me, as I've even had to write a paper on it for a psychology course I did a while ago. In this paper, I discussed the concept of anterograde and retrograde amnesia and how it was accurately depicted in the 2000 film Memento, which a surprisingly good and interesting film to watch. Essentially, the premise of the film was that the main character suffered from anterograde amnesia, with the character attempting to solve the murder of his wife despite his illness. The story is told as a series of flashbacks working backwards and forwards as slowly the audience is allowed to get a chronological understanding of how the events happened. Despite my initial thoughts that it might be a bore to watch, Memento turned out to be a really fun watch and displayed quite accurately the different facets of retrograde amnesia. In watching this movie and understanding the disorder, it's really difficult to live with such a condition and makes me really sympathetic to those suffering from it in the real world.
ReplyDeleteHi Tanvi, I find that every time I read blog posts about memory this week, I was drawn back to Dory, as you mentioned. To me, she is the most significant character I remember that is connected to the idea of memory. I think that in "Finding Dory" we find that the background behind her short term memory loss was further expanded. Apparently, she was born with it, but it became worse when she lost her parents. It's really scary to think about how we can't really remember anything before a certain age. I always think, when was the first moment I gained consciousness of my being? I know, very deep. But it's an interesting question to think about. I have to guess that it would be around when I was three years old, but I'm not too sure. Anyways, I look forward to reading to your next blog post!
ReplyDeleteHi Tanvi! I have always wanted to take AP Psychology as one of my classes because of the great insight the course gives into covering up my existing doubts on self-realization and security measures we should be aware of when our current level of mind. The relation found within a low-self esteem mind with one's likeness of getting depression, anxiety, or any other related health issue is nearly hundred percent accurate because of the mood swings one can face as they progress through their life struggles. Additionally, looking with an optimistic mindset is always healthy for anyone in my opinion because you can correct yourself for mistakes you have made earlier in your life, and see how you can positively change for the better following such occurrences. I have never heard of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in my life; however, I got immensely intrigued to learn more about its different levels and the significance each of them hold. Thank you so much for your blog and I hope to continue reading more about these analogies!
ReplyDeleteHi Tanvi! I was fascinated to learn that our natural memory loss is actually considered a form of amnesia. Although I never took the time to consider it, I really liked your point about how the intentions behind a lot of our actions are because we will remember it. It was quite surprising to see that we could actually develop anterograde amnesia from so many different sources. HM's case is particularly interesting because it was the result of a surgery. I wonder if the surgeons stopped to consider if the surgery to remove parts of his brain was even ethical in the first place. I suppose there is even something morbidly ironic about a corrective surgery creating further complications.
ReplyDeleteHello Tanvi, I enjoyed reading your blog post because I never knew the formal word for short-term memory loss. I always wondered how people with short-term memory loss remembered how to do something because they should be forgetting how to do whatever they learn, but your blog did a good job and clarifying that that is not how it works. The blog post also made me think about the importance of memories. I have never thought of life without memories, but I wonder how a person with such a condition gets effected mentally as a result of having very little memory.
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