Leonard Shelby suffers from severe anterograde amnesia after his wife's murder. He is unable to form new memories and wakes up each day not knowing how he got there. He takes many photos and tattoos himself with notes to try to piece together what he is doing and who to trust as he searches for his wife's killer. The film depicts his fragmented perspective through disjointed scenes and tangents in a way that accurately reflects the experience of living with anterograde amnesia.

1. By: Brandon Shaffer

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Leonard Shelby is a man searching for his wife’s killer
He is also stricken with severe anterograde amnesia
Everything before his wife’s death he remembers, but
he has no ability to hold memories after the event
He has tattooed himself and has written reminders all
over the place of what he should be doing and what he
should be looking for . He takes many pictures.

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He wakes up many times with no recollection
of how he got there, as if he was black-out
drunk the night prior
He has many people that he knows, but he
doesn’t know if he can trust them

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The story is told from the point of view of the
main character – it is a very disorienting point
of view
The film may go off on tangents and suddenly
end and start on a new one, with little to no
continuity
This is close to how a person with severe
anterograde amnesia sees the world

5. 
Anterograde amnesia:
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Inability to create new memories after the event that
caused the amnesia
It is an ill-understood ailment, but it is popularly
believed that the hippocampus is the most afflicted
part of the brain, due to its role in memory creation
Can be caused by drugs, a traumatic brain injury, or
even a severe emotional shock

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This film is heralded by the scientific establishment as
one of the most true-to-life depictions of anterograde
amnesia in any motion picture
Clinical neuropsychologist Sallie Baxendale: ”[…]the
film documents the difficulties faced by Leonard, who
develops a severe anterograde amnesia after an attack
in which his wife is killed. Unlike in most films in this
genre, this amnesic character retains his identity, has
little retrograde amnesia, and shows several of the
severe everyday memory difficulties associated with
the disorder. The fragmented, almost mosaic quality to
the sequence of scenes in the film also reflects the
'perpetual present' nature of the syndrome.”

7. Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_(film)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterograde_amn
esia
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