Anterograde amnesia
| Anterograde amnesia | |
|---|---|
| Specialty | Neurology  |
Anterograde amnesia is a form of amnesia, or memory loss, where new events are not transferred to long-term memory. After the onset of the disorder, the sufferer will not be able to remember anything that occurs after his attention is shifted away from one subject for more than a few seconds.
Those who suffer from theoretically pure anterograde amnesia will still be able to remember memories laid down before the onset of anterograde amnesia, but will exist in a transient world where anything beyond their immediate attention-span disappears permanently from their consciousness. In reality, anterograde amnesia is always accompanied by some degree of retrograde amnesia.
Damage to the hippocampus, fornix, or mammillary bodies can result in anterograde amnesia, which contributes further evidence to the theory that these are the structures primarily responsible for the process of laying down long-term memories. A temporary form of anterograde amnesia is also induced by some medications, such as midazolam.
Famous cases
The most famous case of anterograde amnesia is that of HM or Henry M., the man whose lesions accidentally started the inquiry into the neurobiology of learning and memory.
Oliver Sacks characterizes two individuals with anterograde amnesia in his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Both suffer from Korsakoff's Syndrome, which causes irreversible anterograde amnesia. The story of one patient is called "The Lost Mariner": he began forgetting everything from the end of WWII and felt certain that the date was constantly 1945. He does not even know that he suffers from amnesia and believes himself to be decades younger than he is. The other story is called "A Matter of Identity". Rather than having a consistent false belief about his situation, this patient dealt with his amnesia by constantly re-evaluating and re-explaining his situation. He would greet whoever was in the room over and over again, each time with a different name. Much like "The Lost Mariner", he was unaware of his condition.
Steve Wozniak suffered from anterograde amnesia for approximately five weeks in 1981 following the crash of an ultralight plane he piloted.
Clive Wearing, e.g., The Man with the 7 Second Memory.
Anterograde amnesia in fiction
Anterograde amnesia has also been featured in fiction:
- The 1985 short story A Clean Escape by John Kessel, in which a psychiatrist torments a man suffering from Korsakov's syndrome.
- In the 1994 comedy Clean Slate, Dana Carvey stars as a man whose anterograde amnesia kicks in whenever he falls asleep (typically once a day).
- The 2000 film Memento, presented in short reverse-chronological scenes, gives viewers some feeling for the confusion of its amnesiac protagonist.
- The November 5, 2003 episode "Twilight" of science fiction TV series Star Trek: Enterprise opens with Captain Archer (Scott Bakula) having unknowingly suffered from anterograde amnesia for 12 years.
- The 2004 romantic comedy 50 First Dates casts Adam Sandler as a man who must start anew every day his wooing of anterograde sufferer Drew Barrymore.
- The 1940 satire The Great Dictator starred a Jewish barber who suffered from anterograde amnesia, thinking it to be just after the end of WWI, though he recovered early in the film.
- In the dating sim Kimi ga Nozomu Eien, Haruka Suzumiya is thrown into a three-year coma following a serious auto accident. She awakens with anterograde amnesia. During the three years, her boyfriend Takayuki Narumi and her best friend Mitsuki Hayase have been dating each other, much to the chagrin of her younger sister, Akane.
- The 2004 animated comedy Finding Nemo features the voice of Ellen DeGeneres as Dory, a regal blue-tang fish with short-term memory loss (for example, she calls Nemo by various names -- Chico, Bingo, Harpo -- but when she actually meets Nemo she doesn't remember that's who she's been seeking).