Share:
Memory loss (amnesia) causes, symptoms and Theapie
contents
- causes
- The human memory model
- The sensual memory
- Short-term memory
- Long-term memory
- Concrete triggers for amnesia
- complications
- symptoms
- diagnosis
- Types of amnesia
- Anterograde amnesia
- Drug and alcohol abuse
- prevent memory loss
- Dissociative disorders
- traumatization
- Wanted amnesia
- Mental disorders
- brainwashing
- Home remedies for amnesia
- References:
causes
The disorder can have both organic and neurological causes. Organic causes include brain damage from injury or certain drugs. Amnesia can be a symptom of degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimer's.
Memory lapses until complete loss of memories. Image: pathdoc - fotolia There are also psychological triggers: mental confusion, post-traumatic stress, borderline syndrome, multiple personality as well as nonspecific mental defense mechanisms.
The two main types are the retrograde - and retrograde - and the anterograde amnesia. With the retrograde form, the patients can no longer remember events before a certain time - usually the time of a damaging accident, an operation, etc. Anterograd, however, refers to a mental state in which those affected can not remember events that after one certain event happen.
Retrograde amnesia thus erases long-term memory contents; the anterograde shape prevents short-term memory contents from being stored in long-term memory.
The human memory model
Memory is a core aspect of intelligence - it gives us the ability to think through the past and plan the future. What we commonly call memory is our long-term memory, but there are also important short-term memories and sensory memory that the brain works through before long-term memory stores it.
The different forms of memory all have their own modus operandi, but they all work together in the process of remembering, and all three steps are necessary to make a viable memory.
The sensual memory
The sensory memory refers to the immediate memory - it is a Utra short-term memory. Here we receive information through the five senses of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. The senses are activated when something causes a sensory response - for example, a strong smell.
The most important areas of sensory memory are visual memory and acoustic memory. The visual memory captures images that we see less than a second, the acoustic memory sounds we hear for a few seconds.
Short-term memory
The second basic component of our memory system is the short-term memory - the working memory. Information that reaches the short-term memory mostly disappears completely, but the time until it disappears is much longer than in the sensory memory.
How we store the information does not necessarily depend on its sensuous form. For example, a word we can see from visual sensory memory to short-term acoustic memory. We also speak of auditory-verbal-linguistic memory - hearing, words and language are difficult to separate.
Long-term memory
The third major component of our memory is long-term storage. This memory differs from the previous ones in that the information does not disappear to the same extent.
Keeping something for a specific time in short-term memory may result in storing it as a long-term reminder in persistent storage. The information is repeated. However, repetition is less important than giving meaning to information with stored knowledge.
Once information is stored in the long-term memory, it can stay there for a very long time - sometimes for the rest of life. Many factors influence the length and intensity of the stored information: how important is the person concerned consciously or unconsciously assessing the event? How long has it been since he remembered it the last time? Reminds him of his social environment and his place of life to the event?
Long-term memories are not a historical chronicle and pronounced "opportunistic". Instead of archiving events authentically, it tinkers stored impressions together so that they can be used for the tasks of the present. In this way, people can be persuaded to invent fictitious "memories".
Concrete triggers for amnesia
Any brain injury can theoretically cause amnesia when it affects the brain areas that store memory. Many amnesias cause trauma - both physically and psychologically. Other amnesias are the result of toxic substances, malnutrition or brain tumors.
Amnesia, which results from physical damage, is usually triggered by a lack of oxygen in the brain. Other triggers include alcohol abuse for a long time (Kosakov's syndrome), Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia.
In Korsakoff's syndrome, alcohol has destroyed essential parts of the brain. The brain continues to make "meaningful patterns", but can not rely on memories. So it replaces the memories with inventions, which the alcoholic is often unaware of. He throws things at friends who have never done them, he tells of traveling to countries he has never been in and at the same time he does not recognize the familiar anymore.
Dissociative amnesia is caused by an emotional trauma or shock, be it a terrorist attack, the experience of sexual abuse or a violent crime.
Even natural disasters, earthquakes, storm surges etc. can trigger this form of amnesia.
The risk of suffering a memory loss is similar for the different triggers - in alcohol abuse as in brain injuries or head trauma.
complications
The consequences of amnesia are evident in everyday life: daily actions, personal relationships, the social environment - everything changes for those affected. Occupation and school also affect it when someone suffers from amnesia. If you notice that you have first symptoms of amnesia, you should consult a doctor.
symptoms
The core symptom is memory loss; some lose only part of their memories, others their entire identity stored as memory. Affected persons can also reconstruct events incorrectly or mix different events with each other, for example, because they can no longer distinguish between periods and places. This becomes clear, for example, in people who tell stories of their neighbors after a stroke, but do not perceive that the Experiences 40 years ago.
Accompanying symptoms are nervous problems, lack of concentration and disorientation.
The symptoms depend on how the disorder developed. Most sufferers have an anterograde amnesia, they lose their short-term memory.
When alcohol or drugs cause memory loss, these people forget what happened during the period of acute intoxication. They are then only confused as long as the effect of the drug lasts. However, alcohol and meta-amphetamines also destroy brain areas in the long run: those affected no longer only have a "film tear" during the time of the intoxication, but suffer from a general loss of memory.
diagnosis
At diagnosis, the doctor performs a comprehensive examination to find out what is causing the memory loss: Alzheimer's, other forms of dementia, depression, or a brain tumor.
Computed tomography and Magnnet resonance imaging provide information on brain injury. If the person is suffering from a fever, a urine and blood analysis is announced. The doctor will take blood samples to determine if there are signs of encephalitis, meningitis, brain abscess or encephalomyelitis.
If there is no fever, and the person associates the lost memories with recent events, other "suspects" come to the fore: Alzheimer's, arteriosclerosis in the brain, chronic alcoholism or brain tumors.
Types of amnesia
Retrograde amnesia is very rare in its pure form, usually associated with anterograde amnesia. In its purest form, the hippocampus is damaged, the part of the brain that stores the long-term memory.
The retrograde and anterograde forms mix frequently. Rarely, there is a lack of memory of events that happened long ago, but memories of events that occurred shortly before the traumatic episode are missing.
Anterograde amnesia
Those who suffer from this form of memory loss can not create new memories. He forgets the recent past: he does not know who he talked to in the supermarket half an hour ago, when he gets into the car, he forgets to go where he wanted to go. For example, those affected repeat questions and comments because they forget they were already asking.
This form is typical of drug abuse - some benzodiazepines trigger it with force, or it follows a traumatic brain injury like an operation in which the hippocampus was damaged. A heart attack, lack of oxygen or an epileptic seizure often also result in this form of memory loss.
More rarely, such amnesia is the result of a shock or emotional disorder. In some mental disorders, anterograde amnesias are part of the clinical picture: in all dissociative disorders, memory loss is sometimes even typical, in borderline syndrome, in multiple personality, in Post Traumatic Stroke Syndrome, and generally in trauma.
Even people who suffer from schizophrenia, suffer from this amnesia - but limited in time. Her memories are usually not completely gone, but heavily distorted.
Anterograde memory loss sometimes prevents the recognition of things, but not the feeling of familiarity. So sufferers often feel that they know a shown item, but do not know where from.
Depending on the degree of the disorder, they can regain lost memories by performing actions that are related to them.
A dramatic form of this amnesia is the sudden loss of memory. Without warning, the person concerned loses his memory. But as soon as the symptoms appear, they are over again - usually in 24 hours.
Those affected can recognize their family members, retain their intellectual abilities, and try to regain their memory. They repeatedly ask about everything that affects their environment.
The exact cause is unknown, but the trigger is usually acute emotional or physical stress. One hypothesis is that the brain is temporarily "on the back burner" because it feels overwhelmed.
Drug and alcohol abuse
Anyone who has drunk too much alcohol knows the "film crack". He does not remember what he did last night, and has only blurry pictures in his head. He painstakingly reconstructs the events, when he visits the places of his revelry, individual fragments of remembrance appear again.
However, if the alcohol is broken down, the memory of the time of the intoxication does not reappear, but the memory of the present works again normally.
Midazolam, flunitrazepam, triazolam, nimetazepan and temazepam are all remedy agents.
prevent memory loss
A brain injury that causes the disorder, we can prevent by protecting ourselves from accidents: We can wear a helmet while riding a bicycle, strap on while driving or drink alcohol, when we drive a car.
Avoiding excessive alcohol and drug use also reduces the risk of harming the brain.
Viruses that cause brain inflammation should be treated promptly and aggressively with medication.
Dissociative disorders
People who suffer from a dissociative disorder often do not feel sick. They work in everyday life and in the workplace. But if they get a dissociative boost that can take hours or months, they lose control.
To outsiders, they seem "scary" at first, they come home too late, embarrass things in their home or do not execute orders. For example, if the dissociative phase lasts longer, those affected travel to distant cities, develop a new identity, start a new job, and do not remember what has changed in their lives.
Dissociative disorders indicate an uncertain identity, a missing or blurred self-awareness, and, over and over, interrupted memories and a collapse of memory.
Triggers are traumatic events: war, accidents, extreme violence, the victims either experienced themselves or they were witness.
Alcohol and drugs like meta-amphetamine can trigger these dissociative conditions.
The essential symptom of this dissociative form is the inability to recall past experiences or personal information. Some people with this disorder also suffer from depression or anxiety disorders.
traumatization
Dissociative disorders are not detached from general traumatization. A selective loss of memory in a traumatic experience is a "first aid program" of the brain.
Amnesia through trauma. Image: freshidea - fotolia Victims, whether as victims or witnesses of violence, abuse or disasters, must survive in the situation. That's why the brain filters the terrible experiences and "pushes them aside".
To some extent, we all know that when a bee stings us on a hike, it's better not to focus on the pain, but on the path that lies ahead.
Abused children or hostages in a bank robbery are exposed to a threat from which there is no immediate way out. But in this situation, not overwhelmed by emotions and thus unable to act, the brain splits off the horror.
In the case of a trauma, this splitting goes so far that, although the victims are later plagued by nightmares, they barely remember the moment itself.
Wanted amnesia
Every lawyer knows defendants, witnesses, as well as plaintiffs in proceedings that state that they can no longer remember important events surrounding the crime. Often these are targeted lies.
The sufferers do not suffer from amnesia, but remember exactly the events, but they fool a memory loss: To protect the perpetrator or yourself, to admit no intimate details of their private lives, or because they want to forget the happenings.
The border between such conscious lies and a real loss of memory is sometimes fluid. Our memories are not so much a chronicle as a kit, from which the brain tinkers sensible stories together.
So the same people often tell the same story in different variations as their life situation changes. It is rarely a deliberate distortion, rather details come to the fore, which previously seemed unimportant.
We can also "consciously" forget: We no longer talk about an ex-partner, throw his things in the trash, move to another city and feed our brains with new experiences. Our unconscious mind is slowly developing new patterns to move around the world, and we are adopting this new identity.
Mental disorders
This "storytelling" shows up as pathology in borderline syndrome. People who suffer from this disorder act highly suggestible and manipulate others. It is often impossible for them to distinguish between their constructions and real memories.
They seem like chronic liars, but their lies come from a fragmented identity in which they can not distinguish the real content of memory contents from fantasies.
These people go through phases in which they do not know who they are, where they are, and what they were in the past.
brainwashing
Torture victims, people in the control of psychosis, child soldiers such as forced prostitutes have one thing in common: Those in whose power they are trying to erase the identity of victims and exchange them with an identity in the interests of the perpetrators.
The victims should forget the memory of their previous life. For this, the perpetrators subject them to rituals that condition the brains of those affected - every terrorist system knows innumerable methods.
The perpetrators isolate the victims of everything that reminds them of their old life, locking them in dark rooms so that they do not absorb any stimuli from the outside world. The only information they get is the torturers' repeated instructions.
The victims are humiliated to forget their identity: forced prostitutes are repeatedly raped by traffickers, and at some point the brain of the raped saves this experience as a pattern, while older positive patterns are lost.
The victims, whether tortured political opponents, sexually enslaved children or kidnapped children, are now undergoing phases corresponding to the dissociative disorder.
The younger and the more unstable a victim is, the more effective brainwashing is.
Amnesias as a result of brainwashing can sometimes be reversed. For example, child soldiers are known to regain parts of their old identity after returning to their old family.
But often these are "hopeless cases". Not only were they themselves victims and perpetrators, but their amnesia is fed from various sources: they are as traumatized by violence as they have by violence they have perpetrated; they poisoned themselves excessively with drugs and alcohol. They also split targeted memories.
Home remedies for amnesia
Amnesia as a result of malnutrition is a mass problem in many developing countries. Nutrition plans play a crucial role here. Anyone who suffers from such a disorder, which is due to malnutrition with, should be sure to provide the nutrients, so that the brain can function normally.
An apple is the natural "miracle weapon" against memory loss. Image: Dionisvera - fotolia Those affected should avoid coffee as well as black tea, industrial sugar and white flour. Relaxation exercises and simple physical activities also help them.
Apples are "miracle weapons" in the fight against amnesia resulting from malnutrition. They contain vitamins and minerals to a great extent. Eating a single apple a day helps awaken memories and slows down the mental confusion.
Walnuts are powerful antioxidants and also saturated with saturated fats. They also contain lecithin and vitamin B, which boost memory. Walnuts, combined with figs and raisins, strengthen the nervous system.
Rosemary is also called "herb of remembrance". In Ayurveda, it serves to remedy forgetfulness and exhaustion. Rosemary tea also helps against the less serious memory problems of old people.
Sage also helps a lot to keep the memory busy. It affects the area of the brain that transports experiences into the long-term memory. In general, sage supports brain nerve coordination, causing mental confusion. (Somayeh Ranjbar translated into German by Dr. Utz Anhalt)
Specialist supervision: Barbara Schindewolf-Lensch (doctor)
References:
- http://apps.fischlerschool.nova.edu/toolbox/instructionalproducts/edd8124/fall11/1968-Atkinson_and_Shiffrin.pdf
- https://www.mdsave.com/diseases/amnesia
- http://www.healthyhearing.com/content/faqs/Glossary/Other/31106-Causes-of-retrograde-amnesia
- http://www.human-memory.net/disorders_anterograde.html
- http://www.lifeextension.com/Protocols/Neurological/Amnesia/Page-03
- http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dissociative-fugue