Psychology in Life

5 Facts About Amnesia

Amnesia is abundant in everyday life. However, the psychology of amnesia isn’t completely understood, nor is the physiology. However, the topic is being studied by top psychological researchers around the world.  As such, there are many facts regarding Amnesia. I will list 5 facts that I find to be the most interesting in no particular order.

1. Psychological or Physiological

Amnesia can be caused via two methods. The first is ‘organic’ and can occur when: the victim’s hippocampus (see picture on the right) is damaged usually due to a heavy blow to the head, the victim is suffering from a disease, or the victim has taken an amnesia inducing drug.

The other method is ‘functional’ and describes the psychological factors such as a psychologically traumatic experience, repressed memories and other such defence mechanisms.

Often times, the type of amnesia you see on TV dramas is usually caused by a heavy blow to the head (brain damage). In reality, it is extremely rare for a person to suffer from amnesia due to brain damage. This is because the hippocampus is safely tucked inside the brain and it would take a serious blow to damage the hippocampus.

The hippocampus is the portion of the brain that controls long term memory. Damage to the hippocampus is very dangerous. Extensive research is being undertaken on the hippocampus as psychologists are not completely sure of how the hippocampus functions.

Diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease can often induce amnesia. This is primarily due to the deterioration of the hippocampus. Also, you may have asked why there are amnesia inducing drugs. Often times a person will undergo some sort of traumatic surgery and the drug will cause permanent memory loss for that time period. Isn’t it wonderful? Psychology is being used more and more in everyday life.

Functional amnesia primarily occurs when defence mechanisms of the human mind attempt to repress memories. Think of a child in a room, playing innocently. This child represents your fragile mind. A traumatic experience can be represented by a serial killer coming to murder the child. The room now sets off these defence mechanisms, steel walls that rise up and protect the child. This is exactly what happens with your mind. Due to its fragile nature, it can’t handle some memories. To keep your mind functioning and normal, your mind sets off defence mechanisms that prevent the memories from being recalled.

Now the memories are still there, they just happen to be hidden away. Repressed memories have serious consequences in adulthood, and psychiatric treatment is usually required to recall the traumatic memories.

2. Retrograde vs Anterograde

There are actually two different types of amnesia. The most commonly known type is retrograde amnesia, where the victim loses some or all memory prior to the event that caused the amnesia. The lesser known version is anterograde amnesia, where the victim is unable to hold any memories after the event that caused the amnesia.

Retrograde amnesia is almost always shown as a plot device in a television series or a movie. The protagonist has no idea who he is and spends the rest of the show trying to remember (while falling in love with the girl of his dreams).

While it isn’t as common as the media portrays it to be, it is very serious and often times the memories are never regained. A much publicised amnesia story came about in 2004 when a man was found outside of a Burger King restaurant unconscious. He appeared to have had several blows to the head and when he came to, he could not remember anything. The amnesiac named himself Benjaman Kyle (same initials as Burger King) and there have been ongoing efforts to find his identity.

5 years later, he still doesn’t remember anything except for some bits and pieces.

Now, onto anterograde amnesia or otherwise known as short term memory loss. If you have ever watched 50 First Dates, you will understand what anterograde amnesia is. For those of you who haven’t watched the movie, the female protagonist suffers a blow to the head and then forgets everything after the day she became an amnesiac every time she goes to sleep. While in reality it isn’t as romantic, the movie does raise awareness on this relatively unknown condition.

This condition is usually more severe than retrograde amnesia. Anterograde amnesia is usually caused by damage to the hippocampus or other memory circuits in the brain. The exact memory storing processes aren’t known as of yet, so it is impossible to pinpoint what causes this condition. However, since it is always organic amnesia, it is more difficult to treat than retrograde amnesia, which is often due to psychological causes.

Someone afflicted with anterograde amnesia will find it impossible to learn new facts or memorise new sentences.

While anterograde amnesia is generally seen as worse than the retrograde variant, both types have been known to affect the same person. This event is extremely rare and is impossible to live with. This is called global amnesia and you’ll just have to pray that you won’t ever be affected by it.

3. Alcohol

Hopefully you knew this already. If you didn’t, hopefully this opens your eyes: heavy use of alcohol can cause amnesia.

People have two types of memory. Short term and long term. If the short term memory is recalled enough, then it transfers into the long term memory. If the short term memory isn’t recalled at all, then it is simply forgotten. Consuming an excess amount of alcohol (binge drinking) can lead to a ‘blackout’.

If you experience a blackout, you’ll act just as normal as you would every other time you’ve drunk too much. This is because your short term memory is still functioning. Afterwards however, your short term memory is blocked from transferring into the long term and by the time you’ve sobered up, you won’t remember a single thing.

Speaking of which, I had a blackout the first time I drank alcohol. Over a period of about 2 months, I was slowly recalling random bits of memory. They weren’t too good.

Not to worry! There is a way to prevent blacking out the next time you drink. Studies have shown that drinking over a longer period of time reduces the chances of blacking out, rather than drinking a lot in one go. Between the two groups of volunteers in the study, the group that drank far quicker were more prone to blackouts than the other group, even though they were equally drunk.

4. Hypnotism

I personally like this fact the best. Victims of amnesia are often hypnotised to recover the lost memories. This doesn’t work for all types of amnesia, but it is certainly effective for most.

It is difficult to explain hypnosis without writing a full article on it. In a nutshell, hypnotism allows the hypnotist to directly access the mind. It links everything in the brain to reality. A person under hypnosis is open to suggestions as their mind is opened up.

Now, hypnotism is (relatively) new and it is still undergoing extensive research. Licensed psychiatrists are allowed to practice hypnosis on their patients to help a wide variety of things, including amnesia. Clinical hypnosis is mostly used on people suffering from dissociative fugue (where a person cannot remember anything form a certain period of time).

A person under hypnosis is able to recall certain bits of information, as they try to recreate the scenario in the person’s mind. Take Benjaman Kyle for example (mentioned in Part 1). He was unable to remember anything about his past life, especially not anything that could help him. After a brief session of hypnosis, he was able to recall several digits of his social security number, narrowing his hometown to somewhere in Arizona.

Normally hypnosis is used to recover repressed memories and help the patient ‘become a better person’.

5. Betrayal

Yep. Being betrayed by your best friend can cause you to suffer amnesia. When someone is betrayed, the defence mechanics go up. It blocks out and represses the memories. This is (appropriately) titled Betrayal Trauma, and the symptoms are very similar to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Who knew betrayal had such serious consequences?

Hopefully you learnt something knew. If you know another interesting fact about amnesia, feel free to comment below. To conclude, here is the structure of long term memory.

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