Young Writers Society

Hello,

for my story Remember Me, I need some info about amnesia.
I searched the forum for info already, but couldn't find anything that answered my questions, and the internet didn't really help either.

My questions:
- How exactly can you get amnesia (car accidents etc)?
- Let's say the amnesia is an after-effect of a car accident and the person hit his/her head: What could have happened to cause the memory loss? What exactly "happens" to the brain?

Those are basically my most immediate questions, but I appreciate any info on amnesia.

Thanks in advance for your help!
MySunshine

Hi! I'm gonna try and answer the questions, if this is no help, sorry!

My mom got amnesia for about 2 hours after a car accident. She had been trying to reach the back seat and when the accident happened her head was bashed into the side of the car. Hers was more of a confused state, she couldn't remember address, phone number, and things like that.
Also a friend of a friend's ran into a tree and got amnesia. His is the 'real' kind, he only remembers the people who were there with him the day it happened and not much else.

If I remember right the impact of the hit kills the brain cells, causing loss of memory.

Thanks for your reply!
It does really help

A little question to the friend of your friend (if you don't mind): When did he get into that accident? And does he still have amnesia?

Thanks so much :D
MySunshine

He had it for a week when I heard, not sure if he ever regained any memory (happened some time last month).

Amnesia (from Greek Ἀμνησία) is a memory condition in which memory is disturbed. In simple terms it is the loss of memory. The causes of amnesia are organic or functional. Organic causes include damage to the brain, through trauma or disease, or use of certain (generally sedative) drugs. Functional causes are psychological factors, such as defense mechanisms. Hysterical post-traumatic amnesia is an example of this. Amnesia may also be spontaneous, in the case of transient global amnesia.[1] This global type of amnesia is more common in middle-aged to elderly people, particularly males, and usually lasts less than 24 hours.

Another effect of amnesia is the inability to imagine the future. A recent study published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that amnesiacs with damaged hippocampus cannot imagine the future.[2] This is because when a normal human being imagines the future, they use their past experiences to construct a possible scenario. For example, a person who would try to imagine what would happen at a party that would occur in the near future would use their past experience at parties to help construct the event.

In anterograde amnesia, new events contained in the immediate memory are not transferred to the permanent as long-term memory.
Retrograde amnesia is the distinct inability to recall some memory or memories of the past, beyond ordinary forgetfulness

These are excerps from wikipedia. Here's the link to the full page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amnesia

Hey, I had amnesia ages back when I was 15. So I thought it might be useful for you to hear it from someone first hand.
For me, I could remember pretty much everything exept people and how I knew them. Though their faces were fermiliar, I constantly had that feeling where you know someone's face but can't place them. Anyway, my entire memory came back bit by bit over the following year.

x

Apparently amnesia also affects memories after the accident. For example, if a person hit their head, they wouldn't just forget things that happened before then, but would probably also have trouble forming new memories of things that happened after the event. So if someone told something to the person with amnesia after the accident, they might forget that as well as things that happened before the accident. This, of course, may not apply where fantasy memory-wiping is involved.

OMG! I have a story in which amnesia is pretty much the whole plot. Glad to be able to help you with this.
Okay, first off, complete amnesia in real life is quite a rarity. Causes may be head trauma which resulted in brain damage, or also, if the brain is oxygen deprived, say, from severe injuries in a car accident that caused the person to stop breathing, the oxygen deprivation could kill brain cells causing all sorts of problems. But problem with amnesia like this: the brain damage is permanent. I'm not sure if you want a cognitively disabled MC.
So, there's the second option for inducing amnesia: a psychological response. Some people when faced with traumatic situations may suppress memories as a psychological phenomena.
Or, a brain tumor or other neurological disorder may cause brain injury or amnesia. There are also progressive neurological disease which may result in loss of cognitive function including memory.
Plus: an interesting fact about memory: the hippocampus part of the brain is the memory center which would have to be affected in order to cause amnesia. One guy (in real life) had a virus that ate away at his hippocampus, and after that, he was unable to form new long-term memories. So he could ask you a question one minute and the next literally not know he had done so. Also, certain brain surgeries may induce amnesia, such as a surgery that cuts the nerves between the two brain hemipheres.

I'm pretty sure it's different in each case.

I wouldn't judge one case and use it as research for your own.