How can you get amnesia

Summary Read the full fact sheet. On this page. Symptoms of amnesia Causes of amnesia Memory is mysterious Different types of memory The severity varies Diagnosis of amnesia Treatment for amnesia Where to get help.

Symptoms of amnesia The symptoms of amnesia depend on the cause, but generally include: Memory loss Confusion Inability to recognise familiar faces or places Once the person recovers, they typically have no memory of their amnesia episode.

Causes of amnesia Memory loss can be caused by a wide range of conditions, including: Head injury Severe illness High fever Seizures Emotional shock or hysteria Alcohol-related brain damage Certain drugs, such as barbiturates or heroin General anaesthetics Electroconvulsive therapy Stroke Transient ischaemic attack a 'mini stroke' Alzheimer's disease Brain surgery.

Memory is mysterious The way the brain codes and stores information remains a mystery. Current and often conflicting theories include: Widespread distribution of memories across the outermost layer of the brain cortex Widespread distribution of memories, with certain structures such as the hippocampus playing important roles Localised memory areas in certain structures of the brain only Memory storage in brain molecules Memory storage in clusters of nerve cells neurones.

Different types of memory It seems that the brain has a number of different memory forms, including: Short term - new information is stored for a brief time. If the information isn't further processed, it will soon be forgotten.

Long term - information from the short term memory is shifted to the long term memory. Declarative - conscious memories of information and events. Non-declarative - once learned, habits such as driving a car are ingrained and automatic. The severity varies The severity of amnesia depends on the cause. Diagnosis of amnesia Diagnosing the cause of amnesia involves a range of tests, including: Medical history General examination Tests for short and long term memory recall Other tests related to thought processing Head x-ray Blood tests Computed tomography CT scan Cerebral angiography scans taken after a special dye is injected.

Treatment for amnesia Treatment depends on the cause. Where to get help Your doctor Always call an ambulance in an emergency, Tel. Give feedback about this page. Was this page helpful? Yes No. View all brain and nerves. People with amnesia usually can understand written and spoken words and can learn skills such as bike riding or piano playing.

They may understand they have a memory disorder. Amnesia isn't the same as dementia. Dementia often includes memory loss, but it also involves other significant cognitive problems that lead to a decline in daily functioning.

A pattern of forgetfulness is also a common symptom of mild cognitive impairment MCI , but the memory and other cognitive problems in MCI aren't as severe as those experienced in dementia. Anyone who experiences unexplained memory loss, head injury, confusion or disorientation requires immediate medical attention. A person with amnesia may not be able to identify his or her location or have the presence of mind to seek medical care.

If someone you know has symptoms of amnesia, help the person get medical attention. Normal memory function involves many parts of the brain. Any disease or injury that affects the brain can interfere with memory. Amnesia can result from damage to brain structures that form the limbic system, which controls your emotions and memories.

These structures include the thalamus, which lies deep within the center of your brain, and the hippocampal formations, which are situated within the temporal lobes of your brain.

Amnesia caused by brain injury or damage is known as neurological amnesia. Possible causes of neurological amnesia include:. Head injuries that cause a concussion, whether from a car accident or sports, can lead to confusion and problems remembering new information. This is especially common in the early stages of recovery. Mild head injuries typically do not cause lasting amnesia, but more-severe head injuries may cause permanent amnesia. Another rare type of amnesia, called dissociative psychogenic amnesia, stems from emotional shock or trauma, such as being the victim of a violent crime.

In this disorder, a person may lose personal memories and autobiographical information, but usually only briefly. Amnesia varies in severity and scope, but even mild amnesia takes a toll on daily activities and quality of life. The syndrome can cause problems at work, at school and in social settings.

It may not be possible to recover lost memories. People do this because the more one pushes such unwanted memories out of mind, the harder it becomes to later remember those specific instances — something we have shown in past work. In this sense, the ability forget might be beneficial to daily functioning.

But this new research indicates that attempts to push unwanted memories out of mind also have the unintended side effect of leaving the brain in a temporary state of general amnesia, handicapping the ability to form detailed new memories about life events. So one might have trouble remembering whether they were supposed to pick up the kids at 3 or 5 in the afternoon simply because that arrangement was discussed near in time to a person suppressing thoughts about an earlier argument they had with someone.

Hulbert: This work was partly inspired by the experience of a student in one of our introductory psychology lectures about organic amnesia, a condition in which people are rendered unable to form new episodic memories due to brain damage.

This student raised her hand to tell the class that she experienced a time in her life when she had many of the same symptoms.

She went on to explain that she was an innocent bystander in a widely reported, tragic high school shooting. It was during this period, and the months that followed, that she suffered what she now recognized having heard the lecture as a condition strikingly similar to organic amnesia. During this period, her episodic memory was severely impaired. She could understand classroom lectures, only to forget the material the next day, along with other details about daily events.

There are many reasons why the student might have had difficulty learning after such an event. But we began to ask ourselves whether there was any evidence to suggest that the very act of suppressing unwanted memories in response to continual, inescapable reminders, could alter hippocampal functioning in such a way that it produces a condition akin to organic amnesia.

And we realized that we had been sitting on neuroimaging data consistent with just such a mechanism. Hulbert: In clinical psychology, generalized memory deficits that arise in the aftermath of trauma have been widely documented and are considered an important clinical feature to resolve. Although a number of theories for this pattern have been proposed, this clinical phenomenon has never before been interpreted as the result of a cognitively induced amnesia arising from efforts to voluntarily control the retrieval of unwanted memories.

Indeed, the idea that a state very much like organic amnesia might be naturally created by our own mental activities and their effects on the state of the hippocampus — i. In basic cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience, the windows of amnesia identified here — the forgetting caused by hippocampal modulation — have never been identified as a core process of forgetting. This study provides some converging evidence for the notion of cognitively induced amnesia.

So while a number of cognitive processes may modulate activity in the hippocampus, the common result may be cognitively induced fluctuations in the ability of the hippocampus to perform its normal encoding and consolidation functions, resulting in disruptions to episodic memory.