We read in novels and see in movies cases of amnesia. It is a condition where a person does not know his identity and his social or societal circumstances.
What I want to know is whether amnesia can also wipe off the memory of language skill and other acquired skills.
When we are born we don’t have nothing in the way of language and toilet procedures. All these skills and ways of doing things or performing physiological processes have to be learned: Including all the things we achieved and retained and make use of, namely, by the process of education in any formal or informal ways.
Does amnesia cover only identity data and societal circumstances, or can it also extend to all the things we have acquired in the process of schooling and training and living in society?
Is there a kind of amnesia that brings us back to our new born babe moments?
Susma Rio Sep
Pat Martino, a guitarist very famous in jazz circles, had brain surgery. Afterwards, he had amnesia which included a complete loss of the ability to play guitar. He subsequently relearned the instrument and made an astonishing comeback. Every time I read about this, it discusses the loss of his musical skills but I do not know what else he lost at the same time (e.g., identity, language). Stroke victims often lose significant basic language skills that can be relearned through therapy.
When Jessica Lynch was rescued, there was a story saying that the American Government had stage managed the rescue on the BBC. The arguments the BBC gave were not very convincing at all.
The only thing I thought that looked suspect was the claim she had amensia of the whole event. I’ve never heard of this kind of amensia, where someone forgets a specific few days, and then is fine afterwards. It seemed very implausible. Has this happened to anyone here, or anyone you know?
In 1995 I received a traumtic brain injury in a automobile accident. I could not remember a lot of the events of the last ten years of my life at that time.
There were some things that I remembered well and others I couldn’t remember at all. For instance in 1987 I had been arrested for DUI, I could remember the most intimate details. In 1989 I was married, I know the details of this event because my wife has told me about them.
Also, I could not remember the mupltiplication table but I could recite the rules of trigonometry.
Brain damage is a peculiar feeling.
According to most reports at the time, Lynch sustained most or all of her injuries in a severe crash of her vehicle. It is not al all uncommon for victims of trauma such as this to have amnesia of the specific period immediately before their experience.
Related to this, you often hear of baseball or football players who are knocked hard on the head. They often say they remember nothing before a few seconds before the event.
Yup. I slipped and cracked my skull on inch-thick ice when I was 12.
Severe retrograde amnesia kicked in soon after and I lost all language skills and math ability. Couldn’t understand or speak. Couldn’t remember I had three brothers.
As my memory returned over the next few hours, I began to understand English, which is my native tongue. Curiously, I couldn’t remember how to speak it and every time I answered someone, I answered in French – totally unaware that anything was amiss with my speech.
I also regained basic math skills followed by algebra in the next few hours as well. I began remembering each of my brothers at different times in the order they were born.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can also cause people to have temporary amnesia of the actual events, as the brain just sort-of shuts down the ‘offending’ memories.
Yes, indeedy. My father had a near-fatal accident. He was in a coma for quite some time. Until the day he died about 60 years later he had no memory of the days immediately before the accident.
I was in a car accident where I may or may not have been knocked unconcious. The reason I say may or may not, is because I can’t remember. The last thing I do remember was 30 minutes before the accident. I’ve also been told that I was given some kind of drug, an amnesiac, by the EMTs that responded to the accident. The purpose of the amnesiac was to make sure I had no memory or negative effects from the traumatic experience. (Aside: I wish they hadn’t as I feel a bit cheated having that time “taken” from me.) In case anyone is wondering, I asked a psychologist if it would be possible to retrieve any memories through hypnosis; the psychologist informed me that hypnosis didn’t work like that (if at all).
I was knocked at a high school basketball practice. The whole day (before the concussion)was permanently removed from my memory. Boxers knocked out frequently say they literally “don’t know what hit me.”
