A Real Life "50 First Dates"

[Milkster]

I may have anterograde amnesia, but at least I don't have anterograde amnesia.

I almost pee'd my pants.

[Alvein]

It'd be like living that movie Memento, shudder.

[Zilong]

Groundhog Day had nothing to do with amnesia.

The scenario is similar though if you were forced to live day after day doing what you thought you should be doing without realizing that was the same damn thing you have been doing.

The reason she lost her job since to indicate so.

[Draylo]

That movie fucking sucked.

Good movie.

[Priran]

someone needs to tell her to remember sammy jankis

lol

[Skyylya]

Yeah groundhog day has nothing to do with amnesia...he remembers everything.

There are different types of memory loss and depending on how bad and where the damage is some people can rehab (relearn) how to remember information. Some people just lose that part of their brain altogether and can't process new memories into their longterm memory.

It's like if every new piece of information on your computer went through your RAM before getting saved on your HDD. Imagine cutting the connection between the two so that any time some new information was being 'remembered' by your RAM and you turned off your PC, it would have never made it to the HDD, although everything on the HDD is still there, no new memories or information are being added.

Is a very interesting malady.

[Kayatani]

Can't find the exact video but a few years ago in one of my intro psych classes we watched a video similar to this about a man who had lost his ability to store information as short term memory yet retained his ability to access ltm. Pretty interesting, something about an injury to the corpus callosum or some such.

I think you're thinking of patient HM, who had similar anterograde amnesia to Clive Wearing (as in procedural memory and LTM recall was still intact).

It's like if every new piece of information on your computer went through your RAM before getting saved on your HDD. Imagine cutting the connection between the two so that any time some new information was being 'remembered' by your RAM and you turned off your PC, it would have never made it to the HDD, although everything on the HDD is still there, no new memories or information are being added.

Is a very interesting malady.

This sorta. It's not the short term memory that's damaged in these patients, it's the process of comitting new information from STM to LTM. However, access to existing LTM before suffering brain damage (Clive Wearing could remember the phone number to his childhood home, for example) and procedural knowledge (Wearing can still play the piano from sheet music, and HM was able to learn the new skill of mirror tracing after his injury). If your STM was borked, I'm not sure you'd even be able to respond to a question.

[Deadgye]

I may have anterograde amnesia, but at least I don't have anterograde amnesia.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...5974906077.jpg

The good jokes never get old.

[Byrthnoth]

Most of the patients people are quoting had hippocampal damage (likely including the woman in the article). The hippocampus is required for the formation of long term memories.

If you took Psych 101, they might have told you that there is long term memory, short term memory, and super-short term memory. Nothing here is set in stone and everything is just theories, but you can think of them like this:
* Information about the external world enter the brain through your sensory organs (eyes, ears, etc) and is transferred to the brain by your sensory pathways.
* It arrive at the "primary" cortical and subcortical areas for processing. (V1 for vision, Piriform cortex for smells, etc). These primary areas generally have only one modality (handle only one type of information from the senses).
* They travel from these clean primary areas to association areas that are involved with either higher level processing of a given modality or mixing information from multiple modalities.
* Some kind of resonance in these association areas perpetuates your most recent impressions and is responsible for super short term memory. This probably includes who you're talking to, what you're doing, what the flow of recent conversation is. HM was notorious for getting distracted and forgetting everything that had happened recently iirc, and this was probably the only type of memory he had.
* The hippocampus somehow integrates all of this into a "memory," which is stored temporarily in the hippocampus (think of, like, your memories from one day. Short Term, all stored in Hippocampus).
* As the memory gets older, it magically moves out of the hippocampus and is redistributed in cortex (Long Term memory), where it can be freely recalled even if your hippocampus is gone. Some people have suggested that it literally migrates out of hippocampus, so the nearby areas store the most recent memories.

So if you blow out your hippocampus, you probably can't form lasting episodic memories and you likely can't switch topics and have any memory of the previous topic. "Losing short term memory" like Tyche's little girl could quite possibly be the same thing, depending what they mean when they say short term memory.

[Null]

someone needs to tell her to remember sammy jankis

Wonder if she has every been suggested to get tats.

I'd kind of like to see her reaction to Avatar on blu-ray while she still thinks it's 1994.

That is an amazing thought. I've always wanted to see people's first time reaction to new tech or amazing graphics like that. Have them play MG then MGS4.

[Cyn]

I can't imagine how depressing that must be for her husband. What a guy to stay with her through this

Why? If she can't remember anything then what would she have to nag about? Must be nice.

[isladar]

It'd be like fucking her for the first time, every time.

[Eticket]

Man. She's going to really start freaking out every morning when age starts to hit them hard appearance wise.

I can't even imagine dealing with that.

Good thing they were married before the accidents at least.

Edit. Oh hell, they got married after it? That's got to be a pain in the ass to explain every morning.

[Acturus]

You really think a woman won't nag just cuz she can't remember anything? Have you ever met a woman?

Not that I can remember.

[Callisto]

Points off to the OP for referencing 50 First Dates and not Clean Slate

[shindycat]

Thats incredibly sad

[Ganondorf]

Luckiest husband ever. Interesting read though.

[Jotaru]

Luckiest husband ever. Interesting read though.

If he wants to cheat, he just lays around some old newspapers and pretends he doesnt know her and hopes she survives 24 hours without him... Interesting..