Final Project for Understanding the Brain: The Neurobiology of Everyday Life.

1. CLINICAL
AMNESIA
By: Omega Bain

2. What is Clinical Amnesia?
Amnesia refers to the loss of memories, such as facts, information and experiences.
Though forgetting your identity is a common plot device in movies and television,
that's not generally the case in real-life amnesia. Instead, people with amnesia —
also called amnestic syndrome — usually know who they are.
The primary symptom of amnesia is memory loss or inability to form new memories.
If you have amnesia, you will have difficulty recalling facts, events, places, or specific
details. The details can range from what you ate this morning to the name of the
current president. You will still retain your motor skills, such as your ability to walk, as
well as fluency in any languages you speak
Mild memory loss is a normal part of aging. Significant memory loss, or the inability
to form new memories, may indicate the presence of an amnestic disorder.

3. Types of Amnesia
Retrograde amnesia: When you have retrograde amnesia, you lose existing, previously
made memories. This type of amnesia tends to affect recently formed memories first. Older
memories, such as memories from childhood, are usually affected more slowly. Diseases
such as dementia cause gradual retrograde amnesia.
Anterograde amnesia: When you have anterograde amnesia, you can’t form new
memories. This effect can be temporary. For example, you can experience it during a
blackout caused by too much alcohol. It can also be permanent. You can experience it if the
area of your brain known as your hippocampus is damaged. Your hippocampus plays an
important role in forming memories.
Transient global amnesia: Transient global amnesia (TGA) is a poorly understood condition.
If you develop it, you will experience confusion or agitation that comes and goes repeatedly
over the course of several hours. You may experience memory loss in the hours before the
attack, and you will probably have no lasting memory of the experience. Scientists think
that TGA occurs as the result of seizure-like activity or a brief blockage of the blood vessels
supplying your brain. It occurs more frequently in middle-aged and older adults.
Infantile amnesia: Most people can’t remember the first three to five years of life. This
common phenomenon is called infantile or childhood amnesia.

4. Parts of the
nervous system
that are
active/apparent/
impaired:
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.
The hippocampus, located in the brain's temporal lobe, is
where episodic memories are formed and indexed for later
access. Episodic memories are autobiographical memories
from specific events in our lives, like the coffee we had with a
friend last week.

5. This Course Benefits
This course has allowed you to better analyze
the events and phenomena around you. It has
helped me to be able to recognize some
neurological disorders in everyday life. My
grandmother had amnesia before she passed
away at 60 years old. I never met her but she
was told to be an amazing person who lost
everything because of it. That is why I chose
this topic to research.

6. Real life
Real Patients

7. Hope you enjoyed!
The End!