Amnesia

What is amnesia ? Causes of amnesia Retrograde vs. Anterograde amnesia Other Types of Amnesia How is Amnesia diagnosed ? Treatment Example of Amnesia

What is amnesia ? Amnesia is a deficit in memory The memory can be either wholly or partially lost There are 2 main types of amnesia: Retrograde Amnesia Anterograde Amnesia

Retrograde Amnesia Memory loss of events that happened before brain damage Usually caused by head trauma or brain damage to parts of the brain It is usually temporarily

Anterograde amnesia Memory loss of the event that happened after brain damage Inabillity to create new memories, while the memories from before the brain damage remain intact Can be caused by the effects of long-term alcoholism, severe malnutrition, stroke, head trauma, surgery, anoxia other trauma Cause of Anterograde amnesia is damage to hippocampus

Causes of amnesia Concussion Migraines Epilepsy Specific brain lesions (i.e. surgical removal) Drugs (esp. anesthetics) Infection Psychological Nutritional deficiency

Retrograde vs. Anterograde amnesia

Both Retrograde and Anterograde can occur within a patient at one time Examples: Retrograde Anterograde Amnesia After Brain Injury Retrograde and Anterograde Amnesia

Other Types of Amnesia Post-traumatic amnesia: is generally due to a head injury and it’s often transistent Dissociative amnesia results from a psychological cause as opposed to direct damage to the brain caused by head injury, physical trauma or disease Lacunar amnesia the loss of memory about one specific event Childhood amnesia common inability to remember events from one's own childhood

Other Types of Amnesia Prosopamnesia inability to recognize or remember faces, even in the presence of intact facial recognition capabilities Situation-Specific amnesia can arise in a variety of circumstances (e.g., child sexual abuse) resulting in PTSD Transient epileptic amnesia rare and unrecognized form of temporal lobe epilepsy, which is typically an episodic isolated memory loss

Other Types of Amnesia Transient global amnesia is a well-described medical and clinical phenomenon This form of amnesia is distinct in that abnormalities in the hippocampus can sometimes be visualized using a special form of magnetic resonance imaging of the brain known asdiffusion- weighted imaging Source amnesia inability to remember where, when or how previously learned information has been acquired, while retaining the factual knowledge Drug-induced amnesia intentionally caused by injection of an amnesiac drug

How is Amnesia diagnosed ? To diagnose amnesia, your doctor must first rule out other causes of memory loss like Alzheimer's disease or a brain tumor. Blood tests will test for malnutrition and infection that might influence memory, as in Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome. The doctor will try to determine how severe your loss of memory is and take a thorough medical history by interviewing family members and friends. The doctor may also examine your brain through a CT, MRI and EEG test to check for abnormalities.

Treatment Many forms of amnesia fix themselves without being treated. One of these ways is cognitive or occupational therapy. Second one is taking advantage of technological assistance, such as a personal digital device to keep track of day-to-day tasks. Although improvements occur when patients receive certain treatments, there is still no actual cure remedy for amnesia so far.

Example of Amnesia

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