Anterograde Amnesia Research Paper

Anterograde Amnesia
“They said that memories can be stored forever, but no one warned us about the memory thieves-the Alzheimer’s disease and amnesia(55 Sweet Memory Quotes). Usually people fear that in their old age they may not be able to remember the past, but what people consider less is that there are disorders that can cause a person to lose the ability to create new memories at any age. A disorder that does this is called anterograde amnesia. We must understand how our brain normally works before we can understand anterograde amnesia. The understanding of memory, encoding, memory consolidation, and retrieval is important in understanding what anterograde amnesia is.
The human memory is one of the most amazing and necessary functions …show more content…
Retrieval happens by patterns of neuron activity in the brain. When you want to remember something, you retrieve the information on an unconscious level, bringing it to your conscious mind at will(Mohs). When someone recalls an old memory a representation of the entire event is immediately reactivated in the brain that often includes people, location, and smell. Also when someone tries to remember a singular aspect of an event from his or her past, a complete representation of the entire scene is replayed in the brain like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle(B). Human brain contains circuitry that retrieves appropriate for the current situation(Dougherty). If you have ever tried to remember something and you could not, but later did, it could be that there was a mismatch between retrieval cues and encoding of information and an inefficient component of one part of your memory system, so in order to remember where you put something you must pay attention and be aware of where you are putting it. Also distractions that occur while trying to remember something can really get in the …show more content…
New information is processed normally, but almost immediately forgotten, never making it into the regions of the brain where long-term memories are stored. More specifically, in normal use, neurons of the hypothalamus, makes connections with the cortex of the brain, where long-term memories are stored. Anterograde amnesia can therefore result from damage to the hypothalamus and thalamus and the surrounding structures, so that encoded memories are never stored since connections between the memory structures are disrupted. Sufferers from anterograde amnesia usually only lose the recollection of facts, but they retain long term

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