
One unique aspect of this disorder is that it only affects explicit memory coding. The affected areas in this case are the hypothalamus and the temporal lobes.

Just like the other type of amnesia, most of the time this one comes from some kind of physical damage. Anterograde amnesia means you can’t create new memories after your injury. Therefore, any information you stored before will still be there. Anterograde amnesiaĪnterograde is basically the opposite of retrograde amnesia. He couldn’t create new memories either, so he was stuck in a constant present.

This is what they call psychogenic, or functional amnesia.Ĭlive Wearing was one of the most widely studied patients with a serious case of amnesic syndrome. Clive couldn’t remember a single piece of information about what happened to him before his accident in 1985 that completely destroyed his hippocampus and heavily damaged his temporal lobes. It usually happens with injuries in or around the hippocampus, basal ganglia, or diencephalon. But there are times when retrograde amnesia happens without any kind of injury. The root cause of this disorder is usually physical. In other words, it happens when there’s some kind of brain damage. They’ll also still be able to use other kinds of memories, like implicit memory and procedural memory. It’s also worth keeping in mind that someone can still create new memories with this type of amnesia. Some people just forget a few days, and others forget an entire lifetime. Retrograde amnesia is characterized by an inability to access memories from before the moment when memory was damaged. The time period it affects varies a lot. In the next few sections we’re going to go more in depth of both types of amnesia. Then there’s anterograde amnesia: when someone can’t create new memories. First, there’s retrograde amnesia: when someone forgets anything that happened to them before their illness or accident.

In other words, there are two basic types of amnesia. So when we research amnesia and episodic memory we have to focus on what effect that damage has. Researching memory disorders helps us understand its structure and functioning. It just so happens that most of the research in this area has focused on amnesic syndrome, when a person’s episodic memory is damaged and doesn’t work properly. It’s also why people with amnesia have been such a valuable resource in reaching a deeper understanding of how memory works.
