Eugene Kyere, Wyatt Andresen, Sarah Kerman, Elijah Davila

On March 26, 1985 Clive Wearing went to bed and awoke the next morning unable to recall his wife’s name or answer simple questions. Originally diagnosed with influenza and sleep deprivation, he was prescribed sleeping medication and left in a pill induced slumber while his wife left for work

After being found wandering the streets he was taken to a hospital were he was finally diagnosed with Herpes Encephalitis, a disease that began eating holes into his brain and causing it to swell against his skull, resulting in severe memory loss as well as retrograde and anterograde amnesia

Herpes Encephalitis- inflammation of the brain due to a herpes simplex virus. Basically a cold sore in the brain retrograde amnesia- a memory disorder that cause the inability to remember events or experiences that happen before an important time. Anterograde amnesia- Events after amnesia cannot be remembered and new memories cannot form

Besides the swelling and holes in his brain in damaged parts like the occipito-parietal, frontal lobes, thalamus, hypothalamus and amygdale. The part that is completely gone is is the hippocampus(Greek for seahorse). This is what we use for recalling and remembering as well as laying down new thoughts.

Clive has a short term memory of about 7 to 30 seconds He forgets things easily and has no recollection of what just happened to him But oddly Enough… Musician- retained ability to read and play music- showed short term memory impacted but long term memory largely intact  b/c temporal lobe not impacted Sensory perception of stimuli not impacted

Stark, C.E. (2003) Hippocampal damage equally impairs memory for single items and memory for conjunctions. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. Casler, Leah (2013) Anterograde Amnesia: The Problem that is Forgotten. Mercer University mage6.jpg mage6.jpg keeps-falling-in-love-with-his-wife.html keeps-falling-in-love-with-his-wife.html t_sacks