Definition
The loss of memory (or amnesia) consists in the impossibility, partially or totally, of remembering past, recent or more remote experiences. In severe cases, the subject suffering from amnesia may not even be able to acquire new memories permanently.
Normally, memory capacity depends on the interaction between the cerebral cortex and other brain regions. This process includes the acquisition of new information, the coding (processing, storage, formation of associations and data consolidation) and recovery. An alteration of any of these phases can cause amnesia.
Memory loss may be transient (with a gradual return to normal function, as occurs after minor traumatic injuries), stable (found in the context of serious morbid events, eg encephalitis or cardiac arrest) or progressive (eg dementia on a degenerative basis as Alzheimer's disease).
The disorder can also be classified as retrograde or anterograde, when it is respectively impossible to remember the events that precede the causal event or to store new memories after it. Furthermore, amnesia can be distinguished as global (relative to all sensory modalities and to the whole past) or sense-specific (it concerns a single sensory modality, as in the case of agnosia).
Depending on the nature of the problem, memory recovery can be total, partial or null.
A damage that compromises recent memory and the ability to acquire new memories is often due to degenerative processes, brain traumas and vascular or ischemic lesions, bilateral or multifocal. Memory disturbances on a psychological basis, on the other hand, can derive from a severe psychic stress (dissociative amnesia).
An amnesic state can also derive from tumors, metabolic disorders, nutritional deficiencies (eg thiamine deficiency) and intoxication from various substances (eg excessive ingestion of alcohol, chronic inhalation of solvents, use of doses consisting of sedatives, barbiturates or benzodiazepines etc. .).
Memory loss can also be caused by seizures or migraine.
Possible Causes * of Memory Loss
- Alcoholism
- Cardiac arrest
- Beriberi
- Binge drinking
- Cysticercosis
- Vascular dementia
- Dyslexia
- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
- Migraine
- Encephalitis
- Wernicke's encephalopathy
- Stroke
- Heart attack
- Carbon monoxide intoxication
- Cerebral ischemia
- Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
- Huntington's disease
- Lyme disease
- Menopause
- Alzheimer's disease
- Parkinson's disease
- Korsakoff psychosis
- Schizophrenia
- Syphilis
- Chronic fatigue syndrome
- Reye syndrome
