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Amnesia in the Spotlight Symptoms of Anterograde Amnesia Everyone has lapses of memory. It is common to forget people's names, the location of your car keys, or the title of the book you read last week. However some people have more pronounced failures of memory. People with anterograde amnesia have difficulty following the plot of television shows and movies because they cannot remember the storyline. They find newspaper articles confusing because they cannot remember what was written in the previous paragraph. One common complaint of the spouses and family members of amnesics is that they cannot remember what was told to them 5 minutes ago. In extreme cases amnesics appear to be mentally "stuck" in a particular point in time, usually shortly before some neurological sickness or brain trauma, unable to acquire any new information. Causes of Anterograde Amnesia Most cases of amnesia are due to brain damage suffered from head trauma, stroke, or encephalitis in adulthood. However there are also cases of developmental amnesia in which the onset of amnesia is at birth or very early in life. This may be due to prenatal brain damage or birth trauma that causes neuronal death. Individuals with developmental amnesia often do not realize that they have memory problems. Instead, parents of such children are often the first to become suspicious when they notice that their child consistently cannot recollect what they had for breakfast or what they did for their prior birthday. Research Participants Needed True anterograde amnesia (not related to Alzheimer's Disease) is rare. This is especially true for developmental amnesia. If you believe that you are amnesic and are interested in becoming involved in research, please contact us (ddrowos@psych.upenn.edu). We will try to get you involved with studies that we are conducting if you live in the Philadelphia area, or we can put you in contact with researchers in your area. Studies typically involve three or four hours of memory assessment. Learn More About Amnesia Popular Accounts Various forms of amnesia are often portrayed in pop culture, especially movies. Recent releases such as The Bourne Identity and 50 First Dates tell the stories of people who have forgotten their entire lives. This form of amnesia is different from that which we study in our lab. The type of amnesia we are interested in is more accurately portrayed in the movie Memento, in which the main character has trouble remembering anything that occurs after his brain injury. To learn more about how the brain works in general, another easily accessible resource is the PBS website The Secret Life of the Brain, available at www.pbs.org/wnet/brain/index.html. The full television program can also be rented on video. Ongoing Research There are other labs conducting research on memory and amnesia; their websites can be a valuable resource for information about the latest developments in the field. Some of these labs are listed below. |