why is amnesia selective?

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by scifes, Oct 25, 2010.

  1. scifes In withdrawal. Valued Senior Member

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    i'm sure this question has been asked before, but why is it when one loses his memory he forgets his name, but not how to talk or walk?

    is it like the RAM and hard disk of a computer?
     
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  3. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    I knew the answer once but I forgot! :bawl:
     
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  5. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    The results are MUCH more varied than what you described. It depends on the part of the brain that's been injured and the fact that some areas of memory - specifically short-term - are more likely to be be affected than others.
     
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  7. Dredd Dredd Registered Senior Member

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    There are various forms of amnesia. Some forms, as other posters pointed out, are based on physical damage. Other forms can occur for reasons not caused by physical harm.

    For example, denial of certain events for various reasons is a form of self induced amnesia. It is by far the most prevalent form.

    Other forms are caused by the corruption of memory, whether deliberate, accidental, or negligent activity causes that corruption.

    When the question of "selective" effects arise, the type of amnesia would have to first be identified.

    What appears to be "selective" is more often that not likely to be random.
     
  8. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    People do indeed lose the ability to talk. It's usually caused by a stroke. Most of the time they can still understand speech and written language, and even write.
     
  9. SilentLi89 Registered Senior Member

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    A boy I knew in high school was in a skateboarding accident and got a traumatic brain injury. He could talk and write just fine, but could not read. I remember it took almost a year for him to recover. Brain injuries can be very selective depending on what is damaged, how severe the damage and on how the individual's brain compensates for that damage. The main reason men suffer more from strokes than women is that women's brains tend to compensate for the cells lost better than men's brains do.
     

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