Everyone can remember at least one film or series where the intrigue revolves around a character who suddenly forgot who he is and what his life circumstances are. This move looks like a fiction of the screenwriter, but the idea is based on a real memory disorder - amnesia.
The origin of the mysterious disease
When this disease affects the human brain, it loses the ability to store all or part of the memories and then recreate them in consciousness. There are several main reasons for this memory disorder.
Any stressful situation that deprives the human brain of the ability to memorize and reproduce information can make one forget all the past completely or only part of it. Yes, stress, any anxiety, and even more depression can make a person completely throw out of his head all the memories or some of them.
Also, memory loss can be caused by head injuries - a physical malfunction of one of the parts of the brain often leads to memory loss, and the more severe the damage, the more likely the memory disorder will become irreversible.
It happens that a person himself brings on this mysterious ailment by using drugs or alcohol without any measure. The Russian psychiatrist Sergei Korsakov described memory impairments caused by alcohol poisoning, nowadays called Korsakov's syndrome, back in the century before last.
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Oddly enough, but sometimes completely unexpected reasons cause amnesia. An example of this is the case of a patient in a Washington hospital who was admitted for treatment in a state of extreme panic. The woman claimed that she did not remember a single event from those that happened to her over the past day. Later, doctors found out that memory loss overtook the unfortunate after violent sex with her husband.
Similar cases have occurred with some patients after lifting heavy weights or even after going to the toilet. However, doctors believe that such memory disorders do not harm the cerebral cortex and go away on their own within a few hours. According to statistics, up to five out of 100 thousand people lose their memory in this way in a year.
It is interesting that a person suffering from amnesia usually does not lose the ability to read and write, freely uses household appliances and transport, that is, retains a certain set of basic skills. In some cases, a professional who does not even remember his own name is able to prepare a complex culinary dish, repair equipment, and carry out a medical operation. If there is no one close to the patient, no one will suspect anything.
In most cases, memory recovery occurs naturally after a while. It happens that the illness recedes before new stress: the discovery of some important object or photograph, an unexpected meeting with loved ones or sudden danger.
Longer-term memory disorders are treated by psychiatrists: as a rule, a combination of psychological and drug treatment brings back memories to the patient. However, as soon as the doctors defeat the disease, the recovered person immediately forgets everything that happened to him during the illness.
British scientists have found an original way to combat amnesia: a special camera is hung on the patient's neck, automatically recording what is happening to him every 30 seconds for two weeks. According to the results of the experiment, it was found that nightly viewing the images captured by the camera helps to fix the information from them in the patient's brain.
In children and old people
Studies have shown that, in addition to cases of amnesia that occur in people of all ages, there are cases of memory loss that are characteristic of a particular age.
An amazing phenomenon, still not fully understood, is the so-called childhood amnesia. This is the only form of memory disorder that all inhabitants of our planet, without exception, suffer from.
Parents can fill the life of their three-year-old with a variety of experiences, but, unfortunately, after only a few years, he will not be able to remember much. American scientists have discovered that no later than seven years old, a child develops childhood amnesia, and with rare exceptions he forgets everything that he experienced before.
Psychological tests of several thousand babies showed that children from five to seven years old remember no more than 70% of the events of early childhood, and by the age of 8-9 they have no more than 35% of memories in their memory.
The famous Sigmund Freud was the first to notice this feature of the human brain at the end of the 19th century. During the hypnosis sessions, his patients could not remember a single event from early childhood. Skeptics argued that it was all about the remoteness of these memories.
However, later experiments were carried out in which thirty-year-old people were asked to recall their school years - and everyone easily recalled the events of those years. The explanation for this is in different ways of memorization in an adult and a child. Children's memory stores episodes in an abstract way, without reference to time and place. And that which is not connected with place and time is easily erased from the child's consciousness.
Another part of society that is massively subject to amnesia is the elderly. Brain dysfunction, which takes away memories, destroys personality and breaks social bonds, affects more than 15% of people over the age of 70. Senile memory loss is often caused by the accumulation of "bad" cholesterol on the walls of the vessels of the brain.
It destroys processes in the brain tissue and destroys some segments of memory. As a result, an elderly person can remember events that happened many years ago to the smallest detail, and completely forget what happened very recently. At an early stage of the disease, you can greatly slow down its course, but you must immediately contact a doctor when the first symptoms of the disease appear.
If a person in old age has difficulty concentrating, his memory fails, doctors diagnosed him with cerebrovascular accident - an urgent need to undergo an examination by a neuropsychologist.
In addition to treatment with drugs, hypnosis has been found to be very effective in helping to restore lost memories. In everyday life, treatment is well complemented by such routine activities as doing crosswords, puzzles, memorizing poetry, and similar methods of training memory.
An exciting plot in cinema and life
The mysterious loss of memories, as the driving force of the plot, was used by many authors on a grand scale in literature, and then in cinematography. Interestingly, invented plots are often based on cases of amnesia that actually happened. But what is there, and the writers themselves, it turns out, are not immune from them.
The famous Agatha Christie, who came up with more than a dozen detective stories, had her own mysterious story. One December evening in 1926, Mrs. Christie disappeared from her home. The next morning, her car was found in a ditch, but no trace of the woman was found.
A few days later, her husband began to be suspected of murder, since shortly before the incident he asked Agatha for a divorce. The missing woman was found only 11 days later at the hotel, where she registered as Teresa Neil.
How she got to the hotel, what she was doing and why she called herself by a false name - Christie did not know. Biographers of the writer suggest that the recent death of her mother, the upcoming divorce and a car accident triggered the onset of amnesia.
In the cinema, there is a popular story about Jason Bourne, who lost his memory and gradually found out that for a long time he had been the government's super agent on especially important matters. Bourne from the film got its name in honor of Ansel Born, whose case of memory loss became common knowledge in the late 19th century. The real Bourne served as a preacher in Rhode Island, from where he seemed to go to visit his sister.
In fact, he took his savings and moved to the town of Norristown, where he opened a shop under the name of Albert Brown and healed as if nothing had happened. However, two months later, Mr. Brown woke up again as Ansel Bourne and vehemently denied calling himself Brown.
He believed it was still January on the calendar, and did not remember the months he spent in Norristown. Scientists have established that Bourne suffered from a form of amnesia, in which the patient temporarily loses his personality, and then she suddenly returns to him.
The scriptwriter borrowed the plot of the comedy "50 First Kisses" from life, and in fact there was nothing funny in this case. The Englishwoman Michelle Philpots twice had serious accidents, and after the second of them, which happened in 1994, she lost the ability to retain new memories.
Michelle wakes up every morning in 1994, and her husband, whom she acquired three years after the onset of the disease, has to retell her the details of their family life each time. The woman underwent several operations, but she did not manage to defeat the disease. Michelle is saved only by the support of loved ones and reminder stickers hung throughout the house.
Ekaterina KRAVTSOVA