why is amnesia selective?
- Thread starter scifes
- Start date
I knew the answer once but I forgot! :bawl:
The results are MUCH more varied than what you described. It depends on the part of the brain that's been injured and the fact that some areas of memory - specifically short-term - are more likely to be be affected than others.
There are various forms of amnesia. Some forms, as other posters pointed out, are based on physical damage. Other forms can occur for reasons not caused by physical harm.
For example, denial of certain events for various reasons is a form of self induced amnesia. It is by far the most prevalent form.
Other forms are caused by the corruption of memory, whether deliberate, accidental, or negligent activity causes that corruption.
When the question of "selective" effects arise, the type of amnesia would have to first be identified.
What appears to be "selective" is more often that not likely to be random.
For example, denial of certain events for various reasons is a form of self induced amnesia. It is by far the most prevalent form.
Other forms are caused by the corruption of memory, whether deliberate, accidental, or negligent activity causes that corruption.
When the question of "selective" effects arise, the type of amnesia would have to first be identified.
What appears to be "selective" is more often that not likely to be random.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
People do indeed lose the ability to talk. It's usually caused by a stroke. Most of the time they can still understand speech and written language, and even write.
SilentLi89
Registered Senior Member
A boy I knew in high school was in a skateboarding accident and got a traumatic brain injury. He could talk and write just fine, but could not read. I remember it took almost a year for him to recover. Brain injuries can be very selective depending on what is damaged, how severe the damage and on how the individual's brain compensates for that damage. The main reason men suffer more from strokes than women is that women's brains tend to compensate for the cells lost better than men's brains do.