Anterograde Amnesia Case Study

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In 1972, Tulvin researched and published his discovery that we have two kinds of long term memories, declarative and procedural. Declarative memory is about knowing information like “Sacramento is the capital of California” or “your mother’s birthday”. There are two kinds of declarative memories, semantic which is to do with language, and episodic which is to do with sequence of events. Procedural memory on the other hand is about how to do things. Typically for amnesia patients, it’s the declarative memory (semantic and episodic) that is impaired. Although they can remember events and knowledge that occurred before the beginning of the condition, they find it difficult to store new episodic or semantic memories. (McLeod, 2011). There was a case that was described in NewYorker.com about a lady, Lonni Sue Johnson, who incurred retrograde amnesia due to viral encephalitis, wherein her …show more content…
Retrograde Amnesia is where a person can’t remember anything that occurred before the head injury. The patient may not be able to remember where they live, who they are, etc., but they may still be able to learn new skills. Anterograde amnesia on the other hand is when a person can’t remember anything after the head trauma. If they meet someone today, they will not be able to remember them in the next few minutes or hours. This is where we can’t remember anyone or anything in the future. (McLeod, 2011). Research has found that people with Anterograde Amnesia can be trained to learn new music. In this research, an amateur musician (plays saxophone) was taught unfamiliar songs with biweekly practices. It was found that even though he could not recognize the songs using his declarative memory, he was able to read and play new music using his procedural memory. This showed that it was possible to learn certain things even without the assistance of your declarative memory (Cavaco, S.D.,
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