ipl-logo

Organic Amnesia Research Paper

1264 Words6 Pages

To what extent do you believe that psychogenic amnesia is distinct from organic amnesia?

Amnesia is the total or partial loss of memory and can affect different types of memory (Madan, 2011). In order to be able to help those with amnesia using the best treatment, the different forms of amnesia need to be understood correctly. In knowing this, the treatment can be designed around the type of amnesia, with the cause, symptoms and ways to help becoming more specific and focused. By studying the diseases and improving our knowledge of the roles that memory plays we can increase our understanding of the brain structures and how the types of memory fit together. In this essay I am going to look at Psychogenic Amnesia (PA) and Organic Amnesia (OA), …show more content…

Instead stress or other psychological factors trigger the amnesia (McKay & Kopelman, 2009). The characteristics include retrograde amnesia (RA): the inability to remember memories previously made. This tends to affect the few years before the onset of amnesia and spares more distant memories (Reed & Squire 1998). Another symptom is slight anterograde amnesia (AA): the inability to form new memories. AA is a minor impairment within PA (Kritchevsky, Chang & Squire, 2004). The most significant indication of PA is the loss of personal identity and autobiographical memories (Serra et al., 2007). OA is caused by brain damage (Madan, 2011). The main characteristic of OA is severe AA. Patients also suffer from RA, with the severity of this varying between patients (Serra et al., 2007). The main difference between these two types of amnesia is the cause: one is psychological; the other is biological. In brain imaging scans PA patients display no sign of brain damage while OA patients’ scans always exhibit brain damage (Reed & Squire, 1998). In PA, it is psychological stresses that trigger memory loss, for example, events such as bereavement, financial issues or having a history of psychiatric illness or receiving a mild head injury (Kritchevsky et al., …show more content…

(2007) all underwent neuroradiological and neurophysiological exams to determine the presence of brain damage and confirm the form of amnesia they had. The results were consistent in that the case study with PA showed no brain damage while the OA case studies did show brain damage in the frontal lobes and hippocampus. Yet, only one PA case study is looked at while there are two OA cases in the Serra et al. (2007) paper, this isn’t a large sample. A problem encountered with finding case studies to compare is that individuals suffering from the amnesia being investigated can be rare and so finding larger samples is very difficult. This can lead to generalizability

Show More
Related

  • Critical Thinking Case Summary

    391 Words  | 2 Pages

    A: Exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence in (one or more) of the following: 1: Directly experiencing the traumatic event(S) 4: Experiencing repeated or exposure to aversive details of the traumatic event(S) B: Presence of one (or more) of the following intrusion symptoms associated with the traumatic event(S), beginning after the traumatic event(S) occurred: 1: Recurrent, involuntary, and intrusive distressing memories of the traumatic event(s) 3: Dissociative reactions in which individuals feels or acts as if the traumatic events were recurring C: Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the traumatic event(S) occurred, as evidenced by one or both of the following: 1: Avoidance of or efforts to avoid distressing memories,

    Read More

  • How Does Leonard Suffer From Anterograde Amnesia

    439 Words  | 2 Pages

    Leonard suffers from anterograde amnesia. Anterograde amnesia is a type of severe memory impairment that does not give the ability to form new memories, beginning with the onset of a disorder (Kalat, 1998). Anterograde amnesia is a result of brain damage to the hippocampus. In the film Leonard and Sammy have damage to their hippocampus, a part of the brain that is heavily involved in learning and memory (Kalat, 1998). The hippocampus is where new information must pass before being permanently stored in memory.

    Read More

  • Nvq Level 3 Dementia Research Paper

    436 Words  | 2 Pages

    These type of dementia occurs about; this occurs due to the short-term memory loss. The other problem will be visual-spatial areas, reasoning, judgement and insight. Hippocampus is the region where it gets affected by Alzheimer’s disease, not only that there will be

    Read More

  • Endel Tulving: A Brief Summary

    663 Words  | 3 Pages

    After reading an article by Endel Tulving, he talks about memory retrieval with regards to the human brain. He states in his thesis "The purpose of the present article is to question the traditional view that remembering the past and knowing things learned in the past represent similar cognitive processes" (Tulving, 1989). He continues by saying "I would suggest that remembering and knowing, as these terms are used here, are more appropriately conceptualized as operations of two hypothetical memory systems, episodic and semantic memory, and that in that sense they are not only similar, as all memory systems must be, but also basically different" (Tulving, 1989). In Tulving's first piece of evidence to support the above thesis he uses an example of a case study.

    Read More

  • Multistore Model Of Memory Analysis

    1358 Words  | 6 Pages

    This is what other researchers have thought of too, and therefore a conclusion was made that additional processes have been taking place as well. Another strength is that there is neuropsychological evidence for this model as a patient, HM (Milner, 1966) underwent surgery which impaired his hippocampus and in turn affected his long-term memory as it no longer functioned properly, whereas his short-term memory was rather functional. Due to this we can conclude that these two processes are involved in the process of memory, as one of the stores was affected when the brain was damaged but the other was not (Baddeley, 2009).

    Read More

  • Biological Basis Of Memory Essay

    1648 Words  | 7 Pages

    The biological approach to the basis of memory is explained in terms of underlying biological factors such as the activity of the nervous system, genetic factors, biochemical and neurochemicals. In general terms memory is our ability to encode, store, retain and recall information and past experiences afterwards in the human brain. In biological terms, memory is the recreation of past experiences by simultaneous activation or firing of neurons. Some of the major biopsychological research questions on memory are what are the biological substrates of memory, where are memories stored in the brain, how are memories assessed during recall and what is the mechanism of forgetting. The two main reasons that gave rise to the interest in biological basis of memory are that researchers became aware of the fact that many memory deficits arise from injuries to the brain.

    Read More

  • Trance: Film Analysis

    1131 Words  | 5 Pages

    This claim is supported by research into the life of a man called HM. HM had an operation for epilepsy in the 1950s. surgeons removed a part of his brain which contained the Hippocampus. After the surgery, he could not form new long-term memories – but remembered his old long-term memories. the evidence for HM having anterograde amnesia supports the depiction in Memento of Lenny portraying similar symptoms and behaviour.

    Read More

  • Amnesia In The Maze Runner

    393 Words  | 2 Pages

    One of the books that deals with amnesia is a book titled "the maze runner". The book is about a boy name Thomas who wakes up in an elevator box and finds himself in a place called the glade. Thomas doesn 't have any memory of who he is and how he ended up in the glade. The glade is run by two guys name Alby who is the head leader and another guy by the name of Newt. Each month, a new guy who has no memory of who he is ends up in the elevator box.

    Read More

  • The Vow Analysis

    1153 Words  | 5 Pages

    Functional or psychogenic amnesia is caused by an emotional shock such as being the victim of a brutal crime, sexual abuse and child abuse. Fundamentally, any unbearable life event that causes extreme psychological stress and internal dispute could be the cause of functional or psychogenic

    Read More

  • Amnesia Case Study Psychology

    1296 Words  | 6 Pages

    One famous case of amnesia supporting Squire's view is patient H.M. (Scoville & Milner, 1957), who had parts of his left and right temporal lobe, hippocampus, amygdala and surrounding areas of both removed. He developed severe anterograde amnesia, the inability to learn new information, resulting in an almost completely absent short-term memory storage. He also had moderate retrograde amnesia, unable to remember information between 3 to 11 years prior to his surgery, but with other long-term memories unaffected. Explaining this, Squire argued that memories are consolidated in the hippocampus, easily disrupted by trauma during this. They become less dependent on the hippocampus with time, eventually being stored in the neocortex (Alvarez &

    Read More

  • Repressed Memories: A Literature Review

    624 Words  | 3 Pages

    The research study focused on suppression of visual memories. Researchers first believed that majority of trauma had a visual aspect (University of Cambridge, 2014). That most people who have some type of traumatic experiences like military war or some detrimental close encounter visualizes traumatic experience. That these fortunate circumstances had been imbedded in their psyche and with something so traumatic they will never forget the

    Read More

  • Essay On How To Improve Memory

    1310 Words  | 6 Pages

    This report is about improving students’ memory. The aim to research on this topic is to help students to improve their memory and be have better prepared for exam. Improving memories will take time to improve. The effectiveness will be shown if taking a conscious effort to improve.

    Read More

  • Repressed Memory Paper

    967 Words  | 4 Pages

    In this assignment, look for a news article (old or new) describing the resurface of a repressed memory or studies on it. Then write a 2 page paper summarizing the article, what was the conclusion of the story/study? Based on your readings and assignments, under what circumstances

    Read More

  • Memory: The Three Types Of Episodic Memory

    1118 Words  | 5 Pages

    The semantic memory, on the other hand, is public and related to the connection of the relationship between events or the association of ideas. It contains generalized ideas, principles, rules and facts concerned with general knowledge. Photographic memory helps the individual to remember a scene in photographic detail. It is quite rare and unusual. However, the most astonishing is para-normal memory (also known as reincarnation) through which an individual is able to remember the things or events related to his previous life or

    Read More

  • Memory Vs Memory

    886 Words  | 4 Pages

    Thus, someone who has behaved inappropriately against he thinks of himself (e.g. "for no apparent reason, I had an aggressive behaviour towards a stranger in the subway"), could change his memory to make his actions coherent (e.g. "this person had pushed me to get out of the train"). While the Running head: WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MEMORY AND IDENTITY? 3 adaptive function of this mechanism is questionable from a social point of view, it is effective in preserving the integrity of an individual and his self-esteem. These observations make it possible to understand fitness of false memories of sexual abuse created in therapy in the 1990s.

    Read More

More about Organic Amnesia Research Paper

Open Document