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Amnesia (or amnaesia in Commonwealth English) is a condition in which memory is disturbed. The causes of amnesia are organic or functional. Organic causes include damage to the brain, through trauma or disease, or use of certain (generally sedative) drugs. Functional causes are psychological factors, such as defense mechanisms. Hysterical post-traumatic amnesia is an example of this. Amnesia may also be spontaneous, in the case of transient global amnesia. This global type of amnesia is more common in middle-aged to elderly people, particularly males, and usually lasts less than 24 hours.

Contents 1 Types of amnesia 2 See also 3 References & Bibliography 4 Key texts 4.1 Books 4.2 Papers 5 Additional material 5.1 Books 5.2 Papers 6 External links

[edit] Types of amnesia

• In anterograde amnesia, new events are not transferred to long-term memory, so the sufferer will not be able to remember anything that occurs after the onset of this type of amnesia for more than a few moments. The complement of this is retrograde amnesia, where someone will be unable to recall events that occurred before the onset of amnesia. The terms are used to categorise patterns of symptoms, rather than to indicate a particular cause or etiology. Both categories of amnesia can occur together in the same patient, and commonly result from damage to the brain regions most closely associated with episodic/declarative memory: the medial temporal lobes and especially the hippocampus.

• Traumatic amnesia is generally due to a head injury (fall, knock on the head). Traumatic amnesia is often transient; the duration of the amnesia is related to the degree of injury and may give an indication of the prognosis for recovery of other functions. Mild trauma, such as a car accident that could result in no more than mild whiplash, might cause the occupant of a car to have no memory of the moments just before the accident due to a brief interruption in the short/long-term memory transfer mechanism.

• Dissociative amnesia is used to refer to long-term repressed memory that is the result of psychological, or emotional trauma.

• Long-term alcoholism can cause a type of memory loss known as Korsakoff's syndrome. This is caused by brain damage due to a Vitamin B1 deficiency and will be progressive if alcohol intake and nutrition pattern are not modified. It will usually improve little over time even if they are. Other neurological problems are likely to be present.

• Lacunar amnesia is the loss of memory about one specific event.

• Fugue state is also known as dissociative fugue. It is caused by psychological trauma and is usually temporary. The Merck Manual defines it as "one or more episodes of amnesia in which the inability to recall some or all of one's past and either the loss of one's identity or the formation of a new identity occur with sudden, unexpected, purposeful travel away from home" [1].

• Childhood amnesia (also known as Infantile amnesia) is the common inability to remember events from your own childhood. Whilst Sigmund Freud attributed this to sexual repression, others have theorised that this may be due to language development or immature parts of the brain.

• Global amnesia is total memory loss. This may be a defence mechanism which occurs after a traumatic event. Post-traumatic stress disorder can also involve the spontaneous, vivid retrieval of unwanted traumatic memories.

• Transient Global Amnesia is a well described medical and clinical phenomenon. This form of amnesia is distinct in that abnormalities in the hippocampi can sometimes be visualized using a special form of MRI of the brain known as diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI). Symptoms typically last for less than a day and there is often no clear precipitating factor nor any other neurological deficits. The cause of this syndrome is not clear, hypotheses include transient reduced blood flow, possible seizure or an atypical type of migraine. Patients are typically amnestic of events more than a few minutes in the past, though immediate recall is usually preserved.

• Posthypnotic amnesia is where events during hypnosis are forgotten, or where past memories are unable to be recalled.

• Psychogenic amnesia is when one loses the ability to remember who oneself is. It is a common type of amnesia in popular culture; it may or may not be a real phenomenon.

• Source amnesia is a memory disorder in which someone can recall certain information, but they do not know where or how they obtained it.

• Memory distrust syndrome is a term invented by the psychologist Gisli Gudjonsson to describe a situation where someone is unable to trust their own memory.

• Excessive short-term alcohol can cause a blackout phenomenon with similar symptoms to amnesia.

[edit] See also

• Dissociation
• Dissociative disorders
• False memory
• Forgetting
• HM (patient)
• Clive Wearing
• Repressed memory

[edit] References & Bibliography

[edit] Key texts

[edit] Books

• Whitty,C.W.N. and Zangwill, 0.(eds) Amnesia, London: Butterworth.

[edit] Papers

• Briere, J. and Conte, J. R. (1993) Self-reported amnesia for abuse in adults molested as children, Journal of Traumatic Stress, 6, 21-31.
• Corkin, S. (2002). What s new with the amnesic patient H.M.? , Nature Reviews Neuroscience 3, 153-6o.
• Graf, P., Squire, L. R. and Mandler, G. (1984). The information that amnesics do not forget . Journal of Experimental Psychology 10, 164-78.
• Hamann, S.B., Cahill, L., McGaugh, J.l., Squire, L.R. (1997). Intact enhancement of declarative memory for emotional material in amnesia , Learning and Memory 4, 301-9.
• Milner, B., (1966), Amnesia following operation on the temporal lobes , in Whitty, C. W. M. and Zangwill, O. L. (eds.), Amnesia, AppletonCentury-Crofts.
• Warrington, E. K., and Weiskrantz, L., The effect of prior learning on subsequent retention in amnesic patients , Neuropsychologia 12 (1974), 419-28.

[edit] Additional material

[edit] Books

[edit] Papers

• Google Scholar

[edit] External links

• Betrayal Trauma
• Psychnet UK, Treatment
• A Memory Game

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Memory
Types of memory
Auditory memory | Autobiographical memory | Collective memory | Early memories | Echoic Memory | Eidetic memory | Episodic memory | Explicit memory  |Exosomatic memory | False memory |Flashbulb memory | Iconic memory |Institutional memory | Long term memory | Procedural memory | Prospective memory |Repressed memory |Retrospective memory | Semantic memory |Sensory memory | Short term memory |Spatial memory | State-dependent memory | Verbal memory  | Visual memory  | Tonal memory | | Working memory  |
Aspects of memory
Childhood amnesia | Cryptomnesia |Cued recall | Eye-witness testimony | Memory and emotion | Forgetting |Forgetting curve | Free recall |Levels-of-processing effect |Memory consolidation |Memory decay | Memory distrust syndrome |Memory inhibition | Memory and smell | Memory loss | Memory optimization | Memory trace | Mnemonic | Memory biases  | Tip of the tongue |Lethologica | Priming | Proactive interference | Prompting | Recency effect | Reminiscence | Retroactive interference | Source amnesia |
Memory theory
Memory encoding | Baddeley | Memory-prediction framework | Memory consolidation | Forgetting | Recall | Recognition | Atkinson-Shiffrin | Interference theory | Memory-prediction framework | Dual-coding theory |Decay theory |
Mnemonics
Method of loci | Mnemonic room system | Mnemonic dominic system | Mnemonic link system |Mnemonic major system | Mnemonic peg system | [[]] | [[]] | [[]] |[[]] |
Neuroanatomy of memory
Amygdala | Hippocampus | prefrontal cortex  | Neurobiology of working memory | Neurophysiology of memory | Rhinal cortex | [[]] |[[]] |
Neurochemistry of memory
Glutamatergic system  | [[]] | [[]] |[[]] | [[]] | [[]] | [[]] | [[]] |[[]] |
Memory in clinical settings
Alcohol amnestic disorder | Amnesia | Memory disorders | False memory | Memory and aging | Traumatic memory | | Dissociative fugue |Hyperthymesia |Repressed memory |
Assessment of memory
Benton | MERMER | Rivermead | TOMM |Wechsler | MAS |Rey-15 | PDRT | CAMPROMPT | WMT |
Treating memory problems
CBT | Psychotherapy |EMDR |Recovered memory therapy |Reminiscence therapy |Memory clinic | Rewind technique |
Prominant workers in memory|-
Baddeley | Broadbent |Ebbinghaus  | Kandel |McGaugh | Schacter  | Treisman | Tulving  |
Philosophy and historical views of memory
Aristotle | [[]] |[[]] |[[]] |[[]] | [[]] | [[]] | [[]] |
Miscellaneous
Journals | Learning, Memory, and Cognition |Journal of Memory and Language |Memory |Memory and Cognition | [[]] | [[]] | [[]] |

This page uses content from the English-language version of Wikipedia. The original article was at Amnesia. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Psychology Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.