Written By Kalpitaa R (Grade 12)
The most prevalent ways of how a few people lose their memory might be due to accidents, blood clots or even medication side effects. Such people tend to forget their past and fail to perceive their kith and kin. In some situations, they even forget the minute details of themselves such as their name. Psychologically it is known as ‘Amnesia’. Amnesia in general language is referred to as a partial or total memory loss. Whatever may be the reasons causing amnesia its effect on the brain is almost the same in every case.
Memory is said to be stored in the brain as a memory trace. What makes up this trace is not known. According to one theory, each experience sets up an oscillating pattern or wave of electrical excitation in a group of cells. Each learning experience generates its pattern of excitation. A given neuron may participate in thousands of separate memories but its removal will not appreciably diminish any of them.
Memory is considered a three-part system. Sensor information store(SIS), Short term memory(STM) and long-term memory(LTM). The SIS forms an instantaneous, but a momentary storage of every piece of information that comes in. Information can last for only about three-tenth of a second in the SIS. If it has not been selected and relocated to short term memory within this time, it peters away. Short-term memory is used for carrying information a person needs for a few seconds, but can offer to forget later. Two features of short term memory prevent its use as a perpetual information store. First concentration is required to maintain a specific piece of information in it. Second, it is able to store only six or seven items such as seven-digit telephone number.
For any information to be permanently stored, it has to be passed from short-term to long- term memory by the mechanism of rehearsal. The long term memory has virtually immeasurable capacity. It allows a person to commemorate the scenes that have happened years before. Permanent memory takes place through structural changes in nerve cells caused by patterns of electrical activity in these cells.
When somebody suffers from amnesia that person obliterates either the events preceding it or succeeding it. It can last for weeks, months or even for years. There are people who have lost memory for life. When memory is restored, one remembers all the forgotten things but forgets every event which took place during the period when one had lost memory. One thing is however positive that regardless of restoration of memory, a few after-maths do remain correspondingly plunging the memory.
Featured Image Courtesy – Quanta Magazine
