• Question: if you get amnesia can you recover from it

    Asked by happyfeet to Enda, Jean, Kate, Kev, Tim on 18 Nov 2012.
    • Photo: Tim Downing

      Tim Downing answered on 18 Nov 2012:

      Hi Happyfeet,

      Good question! Memory loss due to amnesia varies between people affected because different parts of the brain are damaged. The hippocampus in the middle of the brain tends to be the main area affected. People with more extensive damage (“anterograde”) have a reduced (or no) capacity to make new memories, and may even have difficulty recalling events before the onset of memory loss. For these amnesiacs, gradual improvements can be made by repetition of tasks so that they develop a routine, which lodges in their subconcious memory. For example, they can organise details on what tasks to do and how to do them, just like we take notes in class.

      Many amnesiacs recover without therapy, which is behaviour-based because no drug exits to treat it. This is based on the idea that our conscious and sub-conscious memory are mobile. For example, when we first learn to ride a bike our conscious memory is working very hard to understand what the body is doing. But with practise, cycling becomes habit and so is stored as a sub-conscious behaviour. So by moving memories and habits between the conscious and sub-conscious patients with amnesia can recover.

      Tim

    • Photo: Jean Bourke

      Jean Bourke answered on 21 Nov 2012:

      Tim’s right. It’s very hard to say if someone will recover. Sometimes they exceed expectation other times they only recover a bit or not at all. There are many types of amnesia and luckily people recover, at least a bit, from many of them.

      Since we understand so little about out brains we are still learning how to treat brain injuries and damage. Something we cannot treat now, we may be able to treat in a few years. Amnesia due physical damage can harder to recover from as the bits of the brain that held the information may actually be gone but the areas around it may have just suffered a shock and so recover over time and possible with drugs (when we find some). If the brain has just suffered damage without actually losing bit, we might be able to develop drugs to help recovery and time helps a lot as it gives the brain a chance to recover. Other times amnesia can be due to traumatic events and that requires a lot of therapy and would need different kinds of drugs to treat.

      There is hope but a lot of time is needed. Even if people don’t fully recover there are many technique that have been developed to help them cope.

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