March 25, 2014 • 58 mins
Those movies where someone gets hit on the head and can't remember who they are anymore? They're actually not too far off from the reality of amnesia. Learn everything about this bizarre and life-robbing condition with Josh and Chuck.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry and uh,
it's Stuff you Should Know the Rodeo. Yeah. Ironically, I
(00:21):
asked if we've done a podcast on memory and either
one of us could remember, And I'm looking it up
on our site and I don't see it anywhere. I
gotta feel like it doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't any
It's tough now with six and thirty forty plus. Yeah,
I mean, we'll like delve into a subject, but it's
not necessarily what the whole podcast is about. And every
(00:44):
once while we come up with one of the stupid
non how X works titles, so that just throws it
off even further. Like we may have like named it
like a a podcast to remember boom boom mnemonic device bitching. Yeah,
we totally did one on memory. Wow, good job, that
(01:05):
was real time. I just worked it out, all right. Well,
we're definitely gonna go over memory some because you can't
talk about amnesia without talking about memory, so we'll just
you know, reinforce that knowledge. I'm excited about this one.
I thought it was pretty good. Amnesia's uh sometimes it's
like TV and movies, but not usually. Uh it can
(01:29):
be yeah, but yeah, that's a very rare case. So
rare that, um, whoever has that kind of amnesia it
gets to be the intro for our podcasts. Who a
guy named Clive Wearing? Yeah? Man, this dude, Yeah, I
feel sorry for him. Did you see the cover of
the book. He has this look at his face like
(01:50):
what are you doing? That's because he wakes up again
every twenty seconds and goes, what just happened? Yeah, there's
a poor man named Clive Wearing here. He's a music
Asian and a musicologist, and he is the He is
the man with the world's poorest memory, which means Oliver
Sacks sleeps on his couch yeah you know, um, and
(02:13):
he has a memory that refreshes itself every few seconds.
He comes out and goes, who's that guy on my couch? Yeah,
and he goes, I'm Oliver Sacks. And he goes, oh, hey, Oliver,
tattooed on your forearm? And then he goes, Oliver, what
are you doing here? That's how it is. But it
refreshes like that, so um, this guy. Uh, there was
(02:34):
a New Yorker profile in him. That conger who wrote
this article um cites saying that eating an apple is
kind of like a magic trick to this guy. Like
one second, like he's got the apple in his hand
and it's intact, and then he'll look down again and
it's just the core. A few seconds later. He has
no memory whatsoever of eating the apple. Um, he may
(02:56):
not even he probably he doesn't remember getting the apple, right.
He just knows there's an apple core in his hand now. Yeah,
so he must have eaten it. Yeah, his uh. And
we'll go over this later. He has a journaling system
because you kind of have to. Um, like in the
movie Memento, Uh, and it had some excerpts and it
(03:17):
was literally like nine o five woke up, feeling refreshed,
nine oh eight, completely awake, now feeling really good. Nine
tin I am fully awake at this point. And he
scratches through previous entries just to to keep track on
where he is in the day. And then it takes
like a really jarring turn once a while, I'll be
like I no longer trust my wife. Yeah, there's some
(03:39):
weird guy on my couch. She's out to get me.
She could really mess with this guy. Yeah, you know,
she could be like Joey Pants and Memento. Yeah. I mean,
how many times in an argument do I say I
don't know what you're talking about? That would be so
great if that was actually affecting. I mean, an argument
would just stop after a few seconds, would be like,
but that would be one of the horrible side effects
(04:03):
of having amnesia, like Clive Wearing has. Um, imagine coming
to and you're a general is still pumping and you
feel the sensation of anger. You have no idea why. Yeah,
that that is what happens to this guy. Yeah, so
we should say that. Um, he's not just like a
a walking noodle. Like he does have some memories. He
(04:25):
has Uh. He has the ability to still play the piano,
which is amazing. He was an accomplished piano player. Um,
but he can. He can play the piano if you
ask him to, and he'll play it well. But then
when he finishes, you can say, oh, what is that piece?
And he will say what piece? And that's that. Yeah.
He he has both retrograde and in tyro grade amnesia,
(04:48):
which is pretty rare to have both of those at once, um,
and what we'll get to what all that means. But uh,
and we'll get to why as well that he and
go make a cup of coffee. We're going to get
to it. You know, we already have. Oh that's a
nice tease. Yeah, he Uh, he remembers his wife, which
(05:11):
is good. Apparently one of the symptoms that he first
exhibited was he couldn't remember his daughter's name though really
one of his earliest symptoms it was a headache, and
then all of a sudden, He's like, what's your name kid? Right?
And then he thought, maybe something's not right here. Well,
and this is one of the things about amnesia that
it's different for everyone, and it's all dependent on uh,
(05:33):
what happened to you and the extent of whatever damage
you may have suffered. Right, And even two people who
have identical types of amnesia, it's going to be different
for them. And here's why memory is different for everybody. Exactly,
we all four memories following similar um constructs. But for
each individual person, what we remember, what makes us remember something, um,
(05:57):
all of that is highly individualized, highly personalized, so much
so that, Chuck, have you ever wondered if we all
see the color green the same. No, you've never wondered.
Now I've never wondered that, but now I am, and
it's fascinating. You haven't never wondered that really? Oh yeah,
(06:18):
like if like our visual cues are subjective, well, I mean,
like I see green and you see green and it's similar.
But haven't you ever wondered if like the shade is
slightly different or I never wondered that just because of
our the information coming to our optic terms, our eyes
are slightly different, like all of those little nuances, like
what's green to me? It's not necessarily green to you,
(06:40):
even though it really is because we both say light's green. Yeah,
but there, if you think about there will be no
way to really describe that because if it's all subjective,
what do you say green is like a combination of
these two colors? Like, but what are those two colors? Yeah,
it's easier to just pointing and be like that screen
you go, now it's not green. Yeah, we should do
one on color blindness. I have it on the list,
but it's um pretty tough, believe it or not. I did, Uh,
(07:04):
don't be dumb on color blindness. Dogs being color blind
they're not. They're not. No, No, they see how you
prove that they see a spectrum. I can't remember. You'll
have to watch. They don't be dumb on it. Um. Okay,
So let's talk about the memory process that humans typically follow,
(07:24):
even though it is highly individualized. Yeah, there's a couple
of types of memory we all know and love as
short term and long term. Um. If you long short
term is good because you remember what you want and
you get rid of what you don't if you if
you didn't, you would be like Mary leu Henner from Taxi.
(07:44):
Oh did she have like an amazing memory? She has
a condition that only another dozen people have in the
US called h SAM highly superior autobiographical memory. And they
just discovered it in two thousand six period, not just
in her. And it's only biographical though, but for these people,
you say June one, n six and merely lou Hennerck
(08:07):
can go, oh, well that was an off day for taxi.
We weren't shooting, and I went shopping at Sacks and
bought the scarf and had a cops salad. And uh,
like I said, though it's only autobiographical, they can't necessarily
remember like everything just about details of their life. But
it's just nuts, Like she literally remembers everything that's ever
(08:28):
happened to her. So that's cool. Yeah, that she remembers
that cops salad because it was probably pretty good to
screw up a cops salad. Uh sacks trip. That's fun. Yeah,
So that's good. But if she were if she had
um a low Laighton inhibition, where all of the things
(08:49):
like the click of of UM, a light bulb turning on,
the buzzing from somebody's electric razor next door, the sound
of water ushing, the look of everything, the feel of everything,
all of the information was coming in and flooding her
memory and asking for her attention to crazy. Yeah. So
one of the roles of short term memory, specifically the hippocampus,
(09:13):
is to say keep that, keep that, throw that away,
throw that away, throw that away. This one seems kind
of important. Oh, this one has an emotion attached. We
definitely need to keep that. That's what's going on with
short term memory. Apparently we keep about seven pieces of
information up to thirty seconds, which sounds to me like
a statement that is going to be utterly debunked as
(09:35):
ridiculous in ten years. We understand memory more for the
time being. That's our concept of short term memory. It
does seem sort of like a stab yeah at something.
It's overly concise. Yeah, you know, I agreed. So that's
short term memory and short term memories basically just holding
immediate information in the front of your mind um figure
(09:57):
tatively in literally uh. And and if it's sorted, it's
sorted into long term memory. That's right. How we store memories,
how we make memories. The first thing that happens is
we have something called sensory memories. So you see a uh,
you hear josh past gas, and you hear a sound.
(10:21):
You might smell something you would not hear that. That's
true you're an sp D guy. Or let's say you
see a strawberry and you taste the strawberry and you
see what it looks like, that it's red, and you
taste it and you know it's tart. Those are sensory memories,
and our nerve cells detect that. They send that as
an electrical electrical impulse along to the end of a
(10:43):
nerve um. It turns on the little neurotransmitter, which sends
a chemical message that hops. We've talked about synapses, those
gaps between nerve cells. The neurotransmitter sends it across that
little great divide to the neuron, which is your brain cell,
and immediately your brain registers that as a short term memory.
(11:05):
Uh And whether or not it becomes a long term
memory is whether or not you need to remember that
and encode it, right, And that encoding process is what
moves it to the deep freeze. You know what I'm
curious about. I wish I thought to look this up.
How does science quantify the present? Like? Can you as
the present? You know? Point eight nanoseconds? Is it the
(11:28):
thirty seconds that you're you're working memories, chewing on something?
I mean, how quickly does a sensation or an experience
become the past? That's nano second after it happens, I guess.
But why a nano second? Why not a micro second?
Why not five seconds? Whatever? The smallest amount of time
is technically probably I guess. So that's pretty deep sought
(11:49):
though after that green, it's like I took acid earlier? Sweet?
Uh so um encoding for long term memories? Where we
were right, All of this stuff is coming to the
hippocampus and the hippocampus works in concert with some other
parts of the brain, the amygdala, the thalamus. The amygdella
(12:11):
is big on emotion, the thalamus is big on um
routing sensory stuff impairing it with emotion. Emotions play a
big role in memory, Yes, because if you pair an
experience with an emotion, it's going to have that much
more of a an impact on our neural pathways that
are formed. Yeah, that's what encoding is. Like the things
(12:33):
you remember most, you're you're you're basically leaving a trail
of bread crumbs along this pathway. If you want to
retrieve a memory, and the stronger, like you said, if
it's tied to emotion, it might be stronger and more reinforced.
Or if it's something you have to remember a lot,
that bread crumb trail is gonna be with larger pieces
of bread. Yeah, the more spot the more times it's traversed,
(12:55):
the the more well worn the path grows, the stronger
that memory is UM. And that's that's a UM A
mechanism called long term potential ation where an initial sensory
experience becomes a hard encoded memory in our long term memory.
And you could crack open like one of our brains
(13:16):
and say, see this this neural circuit right here, that's
my memory of my last birthday. See that donut that's
just there. It just started growing a few years ago.
I'm waiting for it to fully mature before I harvest it.
That was always a one of the early Simpsons had that.
I think it showed people's like thought bubbles at point
and Homer's is just a donut. Yeah, that was pretty good.
(13:39):
I can see that. Uh So, like you said this,
this is all part of the limbic system. I don't
think we said that. No we didn't, which which is, uh,
you know your reward system. You experience emotions through it. Yeah,
learning memory all that is tied to the limbic system.
And um, are our thoughts are being stored in the
(14:00):
crebral cortex? Are i should say, are episode or is
it our episodic well short term that's in this in
the cerebral cortex. Yeah, okay, um so if a yeah,
that's right. Because if you take a specific type of memory,
which we'll get to in a second, it usually gets
(14:20):
stored in the region that's responsible for processing it as
it happens in the first place. So like broke A's
area responsible for processing language. There's also your your language
related memories are stored there. You know that time that
guy shouted at you in Spanish you didn't know what
he was saying. You can crack open the Broker's area
(14:41):
and there it is. Yeah. So the cortex is where
you temporarily put it. It works with the hippocampus to
send it to Like you said, whatever part of the brain.
I didn't know that. That's interesting though, it lives where
it was originated. Total sense. Yeah again, I really just
I have a feeling that are understanding of memory is
tenuous enough that like a lot of this stuff is
(15:03):
going to change in ten years, five years, fifteen years,
But for the time being, this is our understanding. Well,
like with anything in the brain, it's just like there's
still so much mystery, you know, shrouded in it the
gray area. Uh. All right, So there's many types of
long term memory. Uh. They are as follows, and these
will come up throughout the show. Your explicit or episodic
(15:25):
memory is what we do when we study for a podcast. Basically,
it's like facts and information specific stuff, right, we read it,
we learn it, we know it. Yeah, cramming for an exam.
That's how you do it. You've got procedural or implicit Uh,
these are sensory and motor memories. That's how you know
how to make a cup of coffee. And it's it's
(15:45):
like muscle memory. Yeah, it becomes less of memory and
more something that you've done by repetition over and over.
That's why, uh, Clive make that cup of coffee, or
can play the piano. Still, Yeah, he doesn't remember how
to play the piano fingers, just do it from muscle memory. Right,
he doesn't consciously remember. He does have procedural memories exactly. Um,
(16:09):
you've got semantic memory, which is organized and categorized memories.
So it's kind of like a meta version of type
of memory. Right where like you, um, if you're thinking
about what your favorite bands are, something, you have a
file of all the bands you ever listened to that
maybe there's a subfolder in that file of the ones
(16:29):
that you've ever heard that you like, right, and all
of those are based on your experiences of listening to
led Zeppelin or you know, um Boogie Down Productions or
the Carpenters. I can go on. So when someone asks
you what your favorite band is you're scrolling through that folder, right,
and what you're doing is accessing your semantic memory, right,
(16:51):
Or you could just you could be like, look at
the T shirt, but you just default and say Pavement,
then you're good to go. Pixies for you probably how
uh Yeah, I would say these days, I would go
more with Morrissey. Oh yeah, yeah, whoa. Oh He's always
been up there, yeah, nipping at the Pixies heels. But
(17:11):
I would say Morrissey may have taken the lead recently. Yeah.
I remember we're hearing the Smiths for the first time
in like ninth grade. I was like, man, who are
these guys? They still hold up? But if you and
if you listen though, it's like, well, no, you mean
the Smiths. No, I love the Smiths. But if you
listen to Morrissey's career, like all it was was the
(17:33):
evolution of Morrisey started with the Smiths, and he just
kept going and he just hit his stride even more
after the Smiths. I like Morrissey even more than the Smiths.
Man all right, and I felt good to get off
my chest. You won't find me dissing Mars under any circumstances.
He's the man. So you've got emotional long term memory
(17:55):
that those are um well, emotional like superintense memories about
something that may have happened to you. Uh, and then
spatial which are just the spacing of an area. I
remember that in the dark when I go to the
bathroom that I have to walk around my nightstand. Oh yeah,
that's a good one. Running right into it. Man, that
will break your toe. Although that happens, and I kind
(18:16):
of I don't necessarily take issue with emotional memories being
broken out as their own thing, But it seems like
emotion is one of the drivers of memory formation, even
if it's just the slightest feeling. It seems like emotions
attached to all memories. Like it's a it's a signal
like remember this, and it's also a way it's it's
(18:38):
an aspect of memory as well, like when you recall
a memory strawberry. Um, if you have your first strawberry
after somebody mashes it in your face and like twist
your nipples and walks away, right, you're probably going to
associate that bad feeling with strawberries for a while. There's
nothing worse than strawberry. So so all all memories have
(19:04):
some amount of emotion to him, which means all memories
are emotional. But Chuck, that doesn't mean that for the
rest of your life you're gonna have kind of a
sour taste in your mouth when you're eating a sweet
strawberry because of that initial experience, because memories are subject
to change because of neural plasticity. That's right, although you
may as well like you might remember it, but I'll
(19:27):
bet you don't have the emotional experience of it over
and over again if you eat enough strawberries and experience
them in different situations and settings. Right, I guess you're right. Like,
if something has made me sick in the past, I
have an aversion to it, but but I don't power
through it, Like I just leave it there. I won't
drink Milwaukee's best beer anymore. Really get sick off that
(19:48):
man like years ago, and just the smell of it
now immediately, I'm just like, that's funny. Um, if you
wanted to, you could power through it and after enough times,
what you would be doing is activating that neural circuit,
that long term potential action and refreshing it a little bit,
changing your idea of what Milwaukee's Best is all about.
(20:13):
That's a commercial. They should send us some beer and
I'll get over it. There you, but I won't get
so drunk that I passed out and forget because we'll
get to that. That's a real thing. Yeah, that's a
kind of amnesia. It is literally, you can get amnesia
tonight if you want, no thanks, I'm going to see
Stephen Mountains tonight. Full circle. You want to remember that.
And then the third type of memory is where you
(20:36):
combine short term memory with long term memory and you
come up with working memory. UM. One example I saw
during research is when you're looking at a menu. You're
going down a menu to decide what you want to eat.
You're taking in that information from that menu, UM, and
you're creating a little bit of an episodic stimulus in
(20:56):
your short term memory and then your acts seeing your
long term memories, maybe from having pork chops before, um,
and you're comparing the two. That's your working memory. Okay,
So that's a that's a huge aspect of memory as well.
And they think as it stands right now, that it's
basically a combination of short term memory and long term memory,
(21:17):
mixing them together. And there you have your menu choice.
And that's just your day to day kind of deciding things.
That's what your working memory is. That's a very dumb
way to say it, but you know what I mean,
your day to day all right, So I guess we
can talk about an amnesia a little bit now, right. Uh,
(21:38):
forgetfulness is good, it's not a bad thing to forget. Um,
you should remember the important things. But like we said,
it frees up your brain of the the stuff we
don't need. And amnigia is nothing more than a really
bad case of the forgets brought on by It can
be brought on by a lot of things, but a
lot of time it's literally an injury to your brain. Yeah,
(22:01):
well that's neurological amnesia, which is the first kind that
we're talking about here. It can come on from a stroke. Yeah,
it can come on from your you're just not having
enough oxygen for a little while. Drugs. Drugs can bring
it on. Drugs can bring in alcohol. Yeah. What else? Uh?
Any like blunt force trauma, electro convulsive therapy. That was
(22:26):
another good episode we did. Yeah. In the case of
Clyde Wearing, he had a he had herpes and cephalitis,
a viral infection that can do it. It It destroyed his
basically cut the cord of the hippocampus and the cortex.
Well give him that analogy. That's a great analogy, the
telephone cord. Uh yeah, then this is thanks to Kristen
(22:48):
Kongner who wrote this. I don't know if we mentioned that. Um,
if your memories a telephone, the hippocampus is the phone
cord and the synapsis that we talked about are the
in the cortex. Those are the voicemail messages. So in
his case, he had damaged to his cortex I believe,
and the hippocampus, right, Yeah, he has one of the
(23:09):
more severe versions of amnesia. So because the phone cord
was cut in the hippocampus, that's why he has no
ability to form any long term memory because there's just
no pathway and the voice messages are erased essentially because
of the damage to the cortex, and there's no way
that they may be there still, but there's no way
for him to access his voicemail account any longer. So
(23:32):
he is a really bad case of neurological amnesia. And analogy.
I had Mr Telephone Man in my head that new
Addistance song. Oh yeah is to go listen to it.
It worked too. So when you die your baby's number
and you get a click every time, Mr Telephone Man song,
it is a good song. Was pretty good. Yeah, And
(23:55):
well we gone over Bill Bidevo. Well, I've dropped a
couple of references over the years that very few people notice.
Were you a Bell Bio fan? Okay a little bit?
I mean you know that wasn't really my music, but
I'm a new addition man myself. That was a big
Bobby Brown guy. So, um, with this, with neurological amnesia,
(24:18):
there is damage to the structure. Um, and it just
shuts down the whole system. Ry cuts that chord and
um we talked about all of the different ways you
can you can get that yeah, and it can be,
like we said, depending on how severe the injuries are.
It's not always completely cut, but it just may be damaged.
(24:39):
So you may have either really bad amnesia like live wearing,
or maybe not so bad right and um. Neurological amnesia
is very often permanent, but it's also very often stable
unless it's associated with the degenerative brain disease. It's usually
like after whatever event happened to you, whatever you come
to remembering or maybe after you fully recover, um, after
(25:02):
you hit that point where you're like, I don't remember
anything else or I can't form new memories after X
number of minutes or seconds or whatever. Um, it's gonna
stay like that. And we'll talk about how people with
amnesia navigate life in a little bit, and we'll talk
about the other type of amnesia, UM, the associative amnesia
(25:23):
right after this message. So, Chuck, we're talking about neurological amnesia.
That's one type and uh the other type, and there's
different ways to break them out. But the other main
type is the dissociative amnesia, which is brought on by
intense amounts of stress. Yeah, it's UM, it can be
(25:43):
a trauma. The good news is it's usually temporary and
it can associate. Uh, it can come to light in
a couple of different ways. UM. Let's say you had
some super traumatic event that can either damage your memory
as a whole because of massive amounts of cortisol from stress,
(26:05):
or it could just be the one event that you
blocked out, like a really bad mugging that scared you,
or a car accident or something you might not have
any memory just of that, right. That's actually how they
divide um or subdivide dissociative amnesia. There's a global dissociative amnesia,
which is autobiographical, which is like, who am I? What
(26:27):
happened after witnessing your family be murdered or something horrific
like that? You don't remember anything about anything? Um. The
other type of situational dissociative amnesia, where you remember yourself,
you remember who you are, your address out, everything except
that that murder that you witnessed. Yeah, which can be
a good thing. Yeah, it can be get rid of
(26:47):
that memory. You know. You could definitely interpret it as
like a safeguard by the brain, you know. Yeah. Um.
Either way, though, what's happened is, like you said, cortisol
has been released, which has been shown to affect the
hippocampus uh, and it also affects the brain's plasticity, or
(27:08):
its ability to form new memories. So basically, one way
to put it, especially with situational dissociative amnesia, is the
brain says, this is so stressful, yeah that I'm overwhelmed
with cortisol and I can't form new memories right now,
therefore this never happened. Yeah. You know one thing that
was interesting is hippopotamus is um. I saw this on
(27:29):
Animal Planet the other day. They are so stressed out, um,
especially sadly little babies that are orphaned because of poaching
for rhino horns. Did I say hippopotamus rhinoceros. Yeah, they
they they feel for the rhinoceros, the rhinoceros. I was
thinking hippocampus. I think, yeah, um, they can die from
(27:52):
too much cortisol from being stressed, like a little baby
rhino might die because their parents died just from cortisil,
like massive amounts of cortisil. We have to update or
can you die of a broken heart episode? Then I
think we just did. Okay, we can check that off
the list. That's right, Okay. Yes, stressed is a killer,
(28:13):
you know this literally um. And it can cause amnesia
and this is not um. I think a lot of people,
uh suspect that when it's not neurological, when there's not
an organic cause like a brain injury for amnesia, that
it's possibly somebody faking or something like that. No. There there,
(28:35):
they are so stressed out that the chemicals, the chemical
composition in their brain has prevented new memories from forming.
Not plastic anymore. No, Uh. The thing is is that
that the dissociative amnesia is very frequently temporary. Um. There
might be something that triggers a memory that leads to
a cascade of memories that restores the person's memory fully. Um.
(29:00):
You see that in movies too. That's a big popular
one for fiction. Yeah, it's crazy that there's like, I mean,
it's in movies that happens far more frequently, um than
in real life. But it's not terribly far off, not
because the movies are really kind of keeping it close
to reality. Just that amnesia is like, can be that crazy? Right, right, Yeah,
(29:22):
you can kind of do anything, and someone's probably had
that kind So he mentioned weaving, um Wearing. Clive Wearing
has both retrograde and antiro grade, and that is a
couple of other ways that that doctors can um categorize
It is by the type of memory he has. Both
(29:43):
retrograde means you can't remember the past and a taro
grade means you can't make the new memories. And since
he has both, he's in big trouble. H intro Grade
is a little more like the movie Memento when every
thirty or forty seconds you're weren't a new but even still, Uh,
if you haven't seen Memento, just go ahead and fast
(30:05):
forward to this part. Yeah. Um, but he wrongly remembers
his own past, which is a symptom of um retrograde
amnesia that you confabulate. You basically come up with imaginary
things your mind us to fill in the gaps, and
(30:25):
you believe them to be real, but they're not real.
It's imagined. Remember that's how he turned out at the end.
Like he wasn't the insurance adjuster. That wasn't a case,
like that was his life. Yeah. And also very especially
in that movie, very easily to be taken advantage of
the one scene with his when he was paying rent,
(30:45):
when he kept paying rent, like I was like, hey,
your rents do and yeah, I think it was a jerk.
But he has a system. We'll talk about that coming
up too. So let's let's talk about in taro grade.
And taro grade is the inability to form new memories. Uh,
And it's pretty simple. Basically, there's something wrong with the
hippocampus right then, could be permanent in which case you
(31:09):
end up like Clive Wearing and you can't form new memories,
or it could be temporary, could be drunk. That is
why UH and terograde amnesia is far more common than retrograde.
It's one reason we can easily assault our hippocampus through booze.
And as an example of how procedural memory still stays intact.
(31:31):
You can walk and talk and move around and everything,
and then wake up the next morning be like, how
did I get here? And no matter how hard you try,
you're not going to remember specific details if you fully
blacked out, because when you were fully blacked out, your
hippocampus was no longer taking all this information and forming memories,
like they just don't exist. And that's in terograde amnesia.
(31:54):
And it depends on who you are. Some people like
you might have an alcohol blackout way easier than others.
But that if you're blacking out from alcohol, you're drinking
too much, you know. Yeah, even if you're someone with
a super low tolerance and blacks out really easily. Yeah,
blacking out, it's blacking out. It's the line for everyone.
That doesn't mean you're passing out. You're still doing stuff, right,
(32:14):
and saying stuff, you're blacked out, You're blacked out. But um,
it can be kind of tricky because if you think
about it, you wake up the next morning and you're like,
how did I get here? What happened? And by that
time last night was the past, which makes you think, oh,
that's retrograde amnesia. Know that amnesia is related to your
ability to form memories or access old memories. So with
(32:36):
antaro grade, your ability to form new memories in the present,
which was while you were drunk and blacked out, that
was antaro grade amnesia. That's right. Retrograde amnesia is totally
different because it is the destruction of those voicemail messages
of your past, yes, which is super sad. Um Yeah,
because what's life of It's not a collection of memories
(32:56):
you know and hope for the future. Look at you
and this micro second right now. Uh. With retrograde, it's um.
If it's severe, basically, your new memory or your most
recent memories, which aren't as strong and reinforced yet, are
the ones to go first. And then depending on how
severe your retrograde amnesias, it will go further and further
(33:17):
back in your little memory file and start destroying them.
Or if you're the case of wearing, if you have
a super bad you might not remember your past at all. Right,
but you guys remember his wife. He does remember his wife.
And that theory um or that it's called, is that
Ribot's law. Alright, bot I would say, ribo rebo. It
(33:38):
looks pretty French. It does look French. Uh. That is
that that pattern of destroying those newer memories first and
then going back and back depending on how severe it is.
And there's a there's a reasoning to it behind the
whole thing. It's that you're your more recent memories haven't
had years to potentiate and become these well worn paths,
(33:59):
so they're easier to wipe out than your longer term ones.
But it's totally different retrograde amnesia because it it can
attack those parts of your brain where um, those memories
are stored, So it might not have anything to do
with any kind of damage to your hippocampus. It can say,
(34:20):
attack the part of your brain where um again, the
language memories are stored in your broker's area. Yeah, Like
if you have a stroke, you might not remember how
to speak, and that means that broke a's area has
been damaged via lack of blood flow and oxygen. That
might be different. That might be like your you lose
your ability to speak. I wonder if it does have
(34:42):
to do with memory, though, now that you mention it,
I don't know, huh. Like when my grandfather had a stroke,
he still talked, but they weren't words, but he thought
he was talking, Like in his head he was saying,
now you turn left up here to go to the
gas station to his wife, but it came out as
walking walking You can balk and b super bark and barking.
But that was unsettling. It was sad and unsettling. How
(35:05):
how long did he lives? Like the frustration too? Because
in his head he was saying the right words, But
could he hear himself, like what was coming out of
his I don't know, because he couldn't tell us or
he could see on your faces that he wasn't saying
what he was saying. I don't. I mean I was
pretty young, so this is all kind of distant. But
how long did he live like that? Um? I feel
like a few years? Yeah? Did he could he? Right?
(35:28):
I don't remember that usually that's separate. Oh, yeah, so
but he could write still you should find out. I'm curious. Yeah,
I should ask my mom. Was he a good guy?
I used the best? Yeah. Well, I'm sorry, Chuck. That's right,
it happens. It's in my blood line too, so I'm
sure the same thing will happen to me. Is it really? Well,
I will prop you up in front of the microphone
and we'll do a podcast like that. Neil just translate
(35:48):
for me. Yeah, that's very enough to be like I
think he's saying he likes paid me. Uh, you could
just default to that and I'd always be sort of happy,
And that's I was really saying. I was hungry, but
you go yeah. Um. It was weird though, Like his
language was very consistent. It had that saying the familiar,
like there's a lot of walking walking like that sound
(36:10):
like he had made up his own language. It's really
interest man, that's interesting. And the thing is that's how
they figured out that different parts of the brain are
responsible for different Um, I guess different aspects of our
personality your life, Like speaking is different than hearing, yeah,
and writing, right, And it's like if you're just because
(36:32):
you can't talk and form words, doesn't mean you can't
hear and understand words, or write words right, or think
in your head the right words even whether they're not
coming out right. Uh So, with both of these kinds
of amnesia, uh we should point out that your explicit
or episodic memory is what you're losing, but you're implicit
(36:52):
or procedural memory is usually still intact as long as
you're cerebellum is good. That's why you might be able
to make the cup of coffee or ride a bike,
these things that are just ingrained in your in your brain. Right,
And that's why clid Waren can play the piano, but
he can't remember who his favorite composer is. So wearing
is a really good example of how somebody can live
(37:14):
with amnesia. Number One, he has an amazing caretaker, his wife,
who you know, basically she takes care of him. Yeah,
I bet she does little things though, like just where
she wants to eat that night? Right now, we ate
there last night. I'm not going there again, right, he's
like we did, or she can really get him going
where every time he looks like he's like her, she's
kiss right, you know, just to just to delight him
(37:38):
a little bit. It would be fun to do that exactly. Um.
But yes, he has a good caretaker, which is important. Yes,
because there's no treatment for amnesia. There's no right. They
can't inject you with something all of a sudden your
memories come back. So most um, most treatments for amnesia
(37:59):
deal with figuring out how to navigate life under this
the new change to the way you remember things. Yeah,
it's all about systems. You have to have a system
in place that you don't deviate from. UM. In Clive's case,
in the case of a minto, he's tattoos and polaroids
and notes for himself. Yeah, sticky notes, And that's what
weiring does. Basically keeps a journal and like I said,
(38:21):
he crosses things out as it goes, so he knows
where he is in the day. Right. He also can
look at his journal and says, now, I woke up
three times already, I don't need to um. He Also,
the other aspect of UM forming routines is that they
involve habits, and the habits member your procedural memory still intact,
(38:44):
so you end up like just knowing. How does he
know to get up and go to the journal if
his memory refreshes every few minutes for every few seconds.
It's because he's formed a habit, a procedural memory of
there's a journal and you should go to it. So
he knows what we would call instinctively um. Through his
procedural memory of using the journal over and over again.
(39:05):
He's formed to have it. So that helps big time. Also,
smartphones help big time too, because he can access all
sorts of stuff, set reminders. He's got a calendar right there,
basically what most of us do, except taken to the
inth degree. You know, like I rely. I have a
terrible memory. You know this, So I rely heavily on
calendars and notes and reminders. Um. And I don't even
(39:28):
have amnesia as far as I know. Can't you imagine
like every time he pulls his iPhone and he's like, wow, right,
look at this thing. You know, it's reminding me and
it's a computer in my hand. Yeah, the future is here.
His wife is so sick of hearing him say the
future is here. We really poked fund of this guy
a lot. Yeah. I hope he's not listening to this
(39:50):
so he won't remember anyway. Oh there it was, Uh,
psychotherapy if you have dis associate of amnesia can help out.
I imagine that's a tough case to tackle, because not
only do you have to get to the root of this,
like you have to, you have to figure out everything
(40:11):
else first, you know, and then then then sort through
this lost You have to regenerate the bio autobiographical information
and then figure out which part of it is the
real problem. So it's like this huge, massive layer on
top of a normal case that's already a very pronounced
one because the stressful event was so bad that it
(40:32):
wiped out their ability to form memories. That's a good point,
that's gotta be. I'm sure not every psychiatrist can handle that.
I would say you'd go to a specialist or something
like that, an amnesia specialist. Uh do you think there
are those? Sure? Well, I'd like to hear from you
if you listen to the podcast and early shout out
if you have anesia from drinking too much, uh, Corsicov syndrome,
(40:55):
you should quit drinking so much and maybe take some
B one because because what's it called thiamine deficiency? Yeah,
that's all it is, is is vitamin B. Don't you remember
you said that? Um? I can't remember which episode it was,
but we were talking about hardcore alcoholics degenerate basically physically mentally. Yeah,
(41:19):
that's that. And part of it is a thiamine deficiency
which leads to amnesia, which can be treated by laying
off the sauce and taking b one. It's so sad.
Have you ever known someone that was truly like pickled themselves? No,
it's sad, especially when you know it's from drinking. You know,
it's a it's like a form of dementia really yea
(41:41):
from booze. And I like to drink, you know, I'm
not like poopling the whole thing, but like when you're
blacking out and forgetting things and getting the d t s. Yeah,
that's like, that's bad. I know that's obvious, but we
should point that out because we have kids that listen
to this. It's true, you know, all right, So chuck habits.
(42:02):
Oh I wrote another one. I wrote a review of
a woman who who wrote a memoir and she had amnesia, huge,
big time amnesia. Was it short? Um? No? But her
the first line is something like everything you're about to read,
I don't remember. It was told to me. She was
playing with her kid and the kid. She was spinning
(42:24):
him around, and I guess he knocked the ceiling fan
loose and it was like poorly installed, and it came
down on her head and it was like Gilligan's Island
level amnesia and forgets things everything. Yes, she has like
world class amnesia, almost on a Clive Wearing level. Um.
And she wrote this, this memoir, and in it she's
(42:47):
basically saying, like, how she navigates through life with amnesia,
and a lot of it is just faking it. Yeah,
she didn't lose her ability to pick up on social cues,
so she can pick up on what's expected of her,
and she can kind of guess, um, probably. Yeah. She
says she has no idea why people celebrate birthdays or
holidays or anything, but she still does it because she
(43:09):
realizes she's expected to. So she's no, it's not with her,
surely they probably is confabulation. She doesn't believe what she's imagining.
She's faking it, and apparently she's so good at it
that people forget she has amnesia. Um. But she's saying like, no,
I I really genuinely don't remember. I'm just good at
making it seem like I do. So I can fit
(43:30):
in must be so weird and frustrating. It sounds pretty weird,
like if to have to sing Happy Birthday at a
birthday party and she's like, n singing this song. I
know I'm supposed to do it, but I don't know why,
why these people do this? Yeah? Wow, alright, So Chuck,
you want to talk about amnesia detection, which seems like, oh,
(43:50):
that person can't remember anything, they have amnesia, or they
just got hit on the head with a coconut right,
well for wearing. Uh, he had a headache. That was
the first thing that happened. The next thing that happened
a couple of days later, Like you said earlier, he
could remember his daughter's name. So warning signs flashing at
that point, and it really spiraled out of control from
there in his case. Uh. Sometimes just super obvious. Um,
(44:15):
like you said, if you injure your head and you
can't remember things, then you've got some form of amnesia. Um.
Can you recall your past events? Uh? Do you confabulate?
Do you confabulate? And the difference between a confabulation and alive,
by the way, is there's intent with a lie. Right
this person, it doesn't realize they're filling in the gaps
(44:37):
with imagined stuff, or if they do, they don't want
to think about it. There. Yeah, there's no malice involved.
They're just trying to be normal. Uh. You might have
tremors or be uncoordinated, You might be confused and disoriented,
could be in a feug state, which is where you're
wandering around. Yeah, that's with the disassociated identity that can
(44:58):
be present for sure. You remember and John McCain entered
that fugue state in the two thousand and eight debate
against Obama. Did you see that? Yeah? Man, I couldn't
believe it. Even Obama was like, what is this guy doing?
He even he made that face and I think he
pointed his thumb off to this thing. He went to
a different place. Brief fuge state. Uh. One thing you
(45:18):
want to do is get a cat scan or an
m r I or both and see a doctor immediately,
you know, and find out what the heck is going on. Yeah, Like,
don't don't. If you can't remember things that you usually can,
don't mess around. It could be a sign of early
Alzheimer's UM it could be a sign of mild cognitive impairment.
(45:38):
They're both kinds of dementia, Yeah, which I want to
mess around with that. You can get amnesia from those,
or it can be a symptom of dementia. But um,
dementia and amnesia are not one and the same. Um,
So chuck, why don't you see people wearing like, uh,
prevent amnesia t shirts on like a five k run
walk to fight amnesia? I don't know, because there's no
(46:02):
way to prevent it, aside from maybe wearing a helmet
when you're riding a bike, avoiding trees with loose coconuts. Um,
doing what you can to prevent a stroke or cut
down on your risk of stroke, uh, and steering clear
of highly stressful events. Apparently, there's really not a lot
you can do with amnesia. It's bad luck. Is something
(46:23):
pretty much something that happens to you that causes it,
that's right, UM. But again, there are possible they're working
on some treatments. There's no pill now, but they're working
on treatments in the the cutting edge field that's starting
the yield possibly results that could be used to treat amnesia.
(46:43):
Are UM are studying fear extinction the opposite, they're trying
to induce amnesia. And PTSD patients, which I think we
talked about this in our PTSD episodes. I think so
if you've ever seen the movie Eternal Sunshine The Spotless Mind,
that was one of the greatest that on no and
I actually had people say, how was that not on there?
(47:04):
That it was a good movie. We'll call it one
on one okay. UM. And in that movie, UH, people
would pay money to have certain in the in the
case of the movie, certain people remove from their mind,
like a former girlfriend that was so painful you just
wanted no trace over in your memory. UM. But they
are researching that at La Doo Laboratory at n y
(47:27):
U in New York. UH, they did an experiment where
with rats where they would associate a sound with them
being shocked, and they found that in adult rats, um
when they heard that sound, of course, they would freeze
up like they were gonna get shocked, but in baby
rats they didn't UM. And what they learned was after
about three weeks of age, a sort of a molecular
(47:50):
sheath would form around the cells in the amygdala. So
they found a drug that would dissolve that sheath and
basically leave it prone to UH manipulation. Replasticization. Yeah, and
then they basically found that if that sheath has gone
and dissolved, that they could erase fear memories and the
(48:11):
adult rats were not affected any longer by that sound,
the buzzing sound. And they don't know about humans yet,
but there there, that's obviously why they're studying it. Well,
the there just don't want to learn about rats in
their memory. Um. And we we know a pretty decent
amount of human in memory formation um, thanks to a
(48:33):
specific patient named Well. For many many years until just
a couple of years ago, he was known only as
h M. And he was a man who now that
he's died, his identity has been revealed as Henry Mollison. Yeah.
He was a lot like Clive Wearing. His memory didn't
refresh quite as frequently. But um, he was the initial
(48:54):
memory patient. Yeah. He was had a bike wreck when
he was a kid and was leptic from then on
in those seizures. To relieve those seizures, they removed part
of his amigdala, I'm sorry, all of his amgdala and
most of his hippocampus and it stopped the seizures, which
is great. But then they found out, hey, we've got
(49:15):
a really good memory basient on our hands now, right,
because he just couldn't remember, and he was also a
very good, easy going guy. They studied him for life, yes,
from like nineteen fifty three on, I think in nineteen
fifty five on. Yeah, and by on we mean to
two thousand and eight. He just died semi recently and
they're still slicing his brain apart and sending it out
(49:35):
to people to study UM. And he also his brain,
I should say, proved that memory is not one long circuit.
The processes in one long circuit, where like with a
string of Christmas lightbulbs, if one bowl burns out, the
whole thing does. Because he could remember stuff from his
past up to the time when he got the surgery,
(49:56):
he just couldn't form new memories. So they figured out
that UM long term memory storage and retrieval was distinct
from new memory formation, which as we've seen you and
I explained fully. Yeah, they should do. I wish more
people like Henrietta Axe and and Hm were honored, like
these people should have like statues in front of hospitals,
(50:18):
these people who suffered for the greater good, you know,
as far as research and scientifics like those twins that
were separated by the New York Family Services for Twins Studies. Yeah, yeah,
those kids need some statues or on the box, the
big girl in the box. Now the awful the most
awful case ever be a Skinner's kid. Was that the
(50:42):
one that they basically tortured as a child very recently,
like she was recently discovered. I think it's a boy.
I heard about a girl who was kept in a
closet for her whole life and then in Texas and
I remember that too, Yeah, but not to study as abuse, right, yes,
to abuse. Now, there was some I know we've talked
(51:02):
about him before, some boy who was purposefully sort of
abuse for the purposes of research. Oh are you talking about?
Like they didn't have his real name and know who
it was? For me, little Albert, Little Albert where they
they studied fear extinction in him by making him scared
of things. Yeah, yeah, he definitely deserves a statue. See
you remember that and I didn't. So let's um, you
(51:24):
said something that that they couldn't remember his name I
think is what triggered it. Yeah, so uh and that
is uh, that's part of encoding. I encoded it it's
right with the idea little Albert. They didn't remember his
original name. Your trail of bread crumbs is more solid.
So let's talk pop culture real quick man. Good movies, Memento,
you mentioned Internal Sunshimes, follow us mine what else? Um?
(51:46):
One of my favorites is Mulholland Drive. I don't remember
amnis of being a part of that, but yeah, the
the one girl couldn't remember anything. Is it the main character? Yeah,
the burnette Vanilla Sky. Yeah. I did not care for
with it. I know everybody didn't like it. I didn't
like it. There was original Open my Eyes. I think
(52:06):
it was the original Spanish language film that was based
on it was really good. Cat. What else I don't know?
Oh well, Jason Bourne, Yeah he had amnesia. Yeah, um,
fifty first states. That was a cute one about amnesia.
It's a cute movie. I didn't see it. And if
you ice to see it, okay, um, And if you
(52:26):
reverse your perspective a little bit Groundhog Day where Bill
Murray has a tremendously excellent memory and everyone else has
amnesia day, And I think this is a great time
to acknowledge the great, great Harold Ramos of Groundhog Day
and Stripes and Animal House and Caddyshack and Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters. Yeah,
(52:49):
what a loss. He defined comedy for our generation. He
died at sixty nine, which is so young, so young. Yeah,
and checked, there's no way we could do an amnesia
episode without mentioned Benjamin Kyle. You remember him. He was
found in two thousand four in a dumpster, naked and
unconscious in Richmond Hill, Georgia, and he came. We've talked
(53:09):
about him before and like one of those one minute
b s things, um, and he cannot remember anything. He
has complete autobiographical episodic amnesia, retrograde amnesia, and nothing is helping.
They've put him on NPR, they put him on CNN,
they put him on ABC, They've put him on News Channel.
(53:31):
They've done stories on him around the world. He has
a website called Finding Benjamin b E N J A
M A n dot com and they want to figure
out who this guy is. He wants to know who
he is. They have not figured it out. The case
is still cold, so he's not faking it. No, if
he's faking it, he has totally given himself over the
(53:52):
idea that he will never be found out. Because he
has put himself out there. He lives in a bureaucratic
limbo because he doesn't have a Social Security number. He
can't get a new one because he's he's like sixty
years old, and the Feds are like, what do you
need a new use your old one. We gave you
one before. Um. And he has no idea there's a
documentary that's coming out about him, or that might be
(54:13):
out now. Um. But yeah, it's totally legitimate case of
full retrograde amnesia waking up in a dumpster naked in Georgia.
And the reason he's called Benjamin Kyle is because he's
pretty sure his first name was Benjamin. But um, when
he was taken to the hospital, there was already a
John Doe there, so they called him b K because
(54:33):
they was found behind a Burger King, So he took
the name Benjamin Kyle. It's his name, could have been
Mickey d could be anything. Wow, Well, faking it is
a thing, I think, Um. I think Hess, Rudolph Hess,
the Nazi. I didn't look this up, but I think
I remember somewhere that he faked amnesia to get out
(54:54):
of his war crimes. I believe it that guy was
s ob all around. Yeah, here's a Nazi. I know.
I think he did fake amnesian. I think he even
fooled his doctors for a time, but then later admitted
that he had faked it. I might be wrong, did generate.
I didn't do specific research on that, so we'll see.
He was a black shirt though, No way, he was
a brown shirt. I got it wrong again. Brown shirts
(55:16):
with the German black shirts were Italian. All right. Uh,
well that's amnisia. You got anything else, man? If you
want to read more about it, you should type amnesia
into the search bar at how stuff works dot com
and it will bring up this article. Since I said
search parts, time for a listener mail. Uh. This is
from a termite expert. He was a pest control operator
(55:38):
for seven and a half years and on the board
of the New York State Pest Management Association. Let's tie up. Hey, guys,
when you talked about a termidicide treatment, you stated it
is injected into the colony. Uh. This isn't quite right.
Could be misleading to the average homeowner. Uh, it makes
them think that the colony will be killed off. What
really happens is that termida side is injected to form
(56:02):
a barrier on a few inches of treated soil around
the foundation of the house. When termites come into contact
with it, they shortly die. Eventually, the colony realizes something
is wrong and send out alarm pheromones to uh for
the others to avoid it. As to the bait, you'd stated,
it might leach into the soil, this makes for good
radio or podcasting. But again it's an alarm to the homeowner. Uh,
(56:25):
that's not necessarily true. Bait is solid and small and
it will not leach, but it will explode. When I
was in the business, there were two types of bait.
The first was a poison like bait for mice you
put in your home. We didn't use that, but it
is a but that's about it and simple to understand. Uh.
The idea is hopefully they will realize something is wrong
(56:46):
and not come back. The second type of bait, which
we used, interfered with the molting process. You could actually
see them turn a milky white. As young termites could
not grow. The colony died as a nation would die
if no new children were born, Like the movie Children
of Men. That's a good movie. This program was the
only one at the time that would eliminate a colony.
(57:06):
I hate to nitpick. You guys run a good show,
and I just want to see it done right. And
that is from Sean Duffy Pittsburgh, a term my expert
who likes to pick nits. Hey, thanks Sean, right, Yeah, uh,
we appreciate that. Actually, I'm just teasing. Uh. If you
want to tell us something we misstated, slightly or otherwise,
(57:28):
you can let us know. Join us on Twitter at
s y s K podcast is our handle. Join us
on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know, Send
us an email The Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com.
Check out our YouTube channel just search Josh and Chuck,
and as always, join us at our home on the web,
the Luxurious State Stuff you Should Know dot com for
(57:54):
more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it
how Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry and uh,
it's Stuff you Should Know the Rodeo. Yeah. Ironically, I
(00:21):
asked if we've done a podcast on memory and either
one of us could remember, And I'm looking it up
on our site and I don't see it anywhere. I
gotta feel like it doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't any
It's tough now with six and thirty forty plus. Yeah,
I mean, we'll like delve into a subject, but it's
not necessarily what the whole podcast is about. And every
(00:44):
once while we come up with one of the stupid
non how X works titles, so that just throws it
off even further. Like we may have like named it
like a a podcast to remember boom boom mnemonic device bitching. Yeah,
we totally did one on memory. Wow, good job, that
(01:05):
was real time. I just worked it out, all right. Well,
we're definitely gonna go over memory some because you can't
talk about amnesia without talking about memory, so we'll just
you know, reinforce that knowledge. I'm excited about this one.
I thought it was pretty good. Amnesia's uh sometimes it's
like TV and movies, but not usually. Uh it can
(01:29):
be yeah, but yeah, that's a very rare case. So
rare that, um, whoever has that kind of amnesia it
gets to be the intro for our podcasts. Who a
guy named Clive Wearing? Yeah? Man, this dude, Yeah, I
feel sorry for him. Did you see the cover of
the book. He has this look at his face like
(01:50):
what are you doing? That's because he wakes up again
every twenty seconds and goes, what just happened? Yeah, there's
a poor man named Clive Wearing here. He's a music
Asian and a musicologist, and he is the He is
the man with the world's poorest memory, which means Oliver
Sacks sleeps on his couch yeah you know, um, and
(02:13):
he has a memory that refreshes itself every few seconds.
He comes out and goes, who's that guy on my couch? Yeah,
and he goes, I'm Oliver Sacks. And he goes, oh, hey, Oliver,
tattooed on your forearm? And then he goes, Oliver, what
are you doing here? That's how it is. But it
refreshes like that, so um, this guy. Uh, there was
(02:34):
a New Yorker profile in him. That conger who wrote
this article um cites saying that eating an apple is
kind of like a magic trick to this guy. Like
one second, like he's got the apple in his hand
and it's intact, and then he'll look down again and
it's just the core. A few seconds later. He has
no memory whatsoever of eating the apple. Um, he may
(02:56):
not even he probably he doesn't remember getting the apple, right.
He just knows there's an apple core in his hand now. Yeah,
so he must have eaten it. Yeah, his uh. And
we'll go over this later. He has a journaling system
because you kind of have to. Um, like in the
movie Memento, Uh, and it had some excerpts and it
(03:17):
was literally like nine o five woke up, feeling refreshed,
nine oh eight, completely awake, now feeling really good. Nine
tin I am fully awake at this point. And he
scratches through previous entries just to to keep track on
where he is in the day. And then it takes
like a really jarring turn once a while, I'll be
like I no longer trust my wife. Yeah, there's some
(03:39):
weird guy on my couch. She's out to get me.
She could really mess with this guy. Yeah, you know,
she could be like Joey Pants and Memento. Yeah. I mean,
how many times in an argument do I say I
don't know what you're talking about? That would be so
great if that was actually affecting. I mean, an argument
would just stop after a few seconds, would be like,
but that would be one of the horrible side effects
(04:03):
of having amnesia, like Clive Wearing has. Um, imagine coming
to and you're a general is still pumping and you
feel the sensation of anger. You have no idea why. Yeah,
that that is what happens to this guy. Yeah, so
we should say that. Um, he's not just like a
a walking noodle. Like he does have some memories. He
(04:25):
has Uh. He has the ability to still play the piano,
which is amazing. He was an accomplished piano player. Um,
but he can. He can play the piano if you
ask him to, and he'll play it well. But then
when he finishes, you can say, oh, what is that piece?
And he will say what piece? And that's that. Yeah.
He he has both retrograde and in tyro grade amnesia,
(04:48):
which is pretty rare to have both of those at once, um,
and what we'll get to what all that means. But uh,
and we'll get to why as well that he and
go make a cup of coffee. We're going to get
to it. You know, we already have. Oh that's a
nice tease. Yeah, he Uh, he remembers his wife, which
(05:11):
is good. Apparently one of the symptoms that he first
exhibited was he couldn't remember his daughter's name though really
one of his earliest symptoms it was a headache, and
then all of a sudden, He's like, what's your name kid? Right?
And then he thought, maybe something's not right here. Well,
and this is one of the things about amnesia that
it's different for everyone, and it's all dependent on uh,
(05:33):
what happened to you and the extent of whatever damage
you may have suffered. Right, And even two people who
have identical types of amnesia, it's going to be different
for them. And here's why memory is different for everybody. Exactly,
we all four memories following similar um constructs. But for
each individual person, what we remember, what makes us remember something, um,
(05:57):
all of that is highly individualized, highly personalized, so much
so that, Chuck, have you ever wondered if we all
see the color green the same. No, you've never wondered.
Now I've never wondered that, but now I am, and
it's fascinating. You haven't never wondered that really? Oh yeah,
(06:18):
like if like our visual cues are subjective, well, I mean,
like I see green and you see green and it's similar.
But haven't you ever wondered if like the shade is
slightly different or I never wondered that just because of
our the information coming to our optic terms, our eyes
are slightly different, like all of those little nuances, like
what's green to me? It's not necessarily green to you,
(06:40):
even though it really is because we both say light's green. Yeah,
but there, if you think about there will be no
way to really describe that because if it's all subjective,
what do you say green is like a combination of
these two colors? Like, but what are those two colors? Yeah,
it's easier to just pointing and be like that screen
you go, now it's not green. Yeah, we should do
one on color blindness. I have it on the list,
but it's um pretty tough, believe it or not. I did, Uh,
(07:04):
don't be dumb on color blindness. Dogs being color blind
they're not. They're not. No, No, they see how you
prove that they see a spectrum. I can't remember. You'll
have to watch. They don't be dumb on it. Um. Okay,
So let's talk about the memory process that humans typically follow,
(07:24):
even though it is highly individualized. Yeah, there's a couple
of types of memory we all know and love as
short term and long term. Um. If you long short
term is good because you remember what you want and
you get rid of what you don't if you if
you didn't, you would be like Mary leu Henner from Taxi.
(07:44):
Oh did she have like an amazing memory? She has
a condition that only another dozen people have in the
US called h SAM highly superior autobiographical memory. And they
just discovered it in two thousand six period, not just
in her. And it's only biographical though, but for these people,
you say June one, n six and merely lou Hennerck
(08:07):
can go, oh, well that was an off day for taxi.
We weren't shooting, and I went shopping at Sacks and
bought the scarf and had a cops salad. And uh,
like I said, though it's only autobiographical, they can't necessarily
remember like everything just about details of their life. But
it's just nuts, Like she literally remembers everything that's ever
(08:28):
happened to her. So that's cool. Yeah, that she remembers
that cops salad because it was probably pretty good to
screw up a cops salad. Uh sacks trip. That's fun. Yeah,
So that's good. But if she were if she had
um a low Laighton inhibition, where all of the things
(08:49):
like the click of of UM, a light bulb turning on,
the buzzing from somebody's electric razor next door, the sound
of water ushing, the look of everything, the feel of everything,
all of the information was coming in and flooding her
memory and asking for her attention to crazy. Yeah. So
one of the roles of short term memory, specifically the hippocampus,
(09:13):
is to say keep that, keep that, throw that away,
throw that away, throw that away. This one seems kind
of important. Oh, this one has an emotion attached. We
definitely need to keep that. That's what's going on with
short term memory. Apparently we keep about seven pieces of
information up to thirty seconds, which sounds to me like
a statement that is going to be utterly debunked as
(09:35):
ridiculous in ten years. We understand memory more for the
time being. That's our concept of short term memory. It
does seem sort of like a stab yeah at something.
It's overly concise. Yeah, you know, I agreed. So that's
short term memory and short term memories basically just holding
immediate information in the front of your mind um figure
(09:57):
tatively in literally uh. And and if it's sorted, it's
sorted into long term memory. That's right. How we store memories,
how we make memories. The first thing that happens is
we have something called sensory memories. So you see a uh,
you hear josh past gas, and you hear a sound.
(10:21):
You might smell something you would not hear that. That's
true you're an sp D guy. Or let's say you
see a strawberry and you taste the strawberry and you
see what it looks like, that it's red, and you
taste it and you know it's tart. Those are sensory memories,
and our nerve cells detect that. They send that as
an electrical electrical impulse along to the end of a
(10:43):
nerve um. It turns on the little neurotransmitter, which sends
a chemical message that hops. We've talked about synapses, those
gaps between nerve cells. The neurotransmitter sends it across that
little great divide to the neuron, which is your brain cell,
and immediately your brain registers that as a short term memory.
(11:05):
Uh And whether or not it becomes a long term
memory is whether or not you need to remember that
and encode it, right, And that encoding process is what
moves it to the deep freeze. You know what I'm
curious about. I wish I thought to look this up.
How does science quantify the present? Like? Can you as
the present? You know? Point eight nanoseconds? Is it the
(11:28):
thirty seconds that you're you're working memories, chewing on something?
I mean, how quickly does a sensation or an experience
become the past? That's nano second after it happens, I guess.
But why a nano second? Why not a micro second?
Why not five seconds? Whatever? The smallest amount of time
is technically probably I guess. So that's pretty deep sought
(11:49):
though after that green, it's like I took acid earlier? Sweet?
Uh so um encoding for long term memories? Where we
were right, All of this stuff is coming to the
hippocampus and the hippocampus works in concert with some other
parts of the brain, the amygdala, the thalamus. The amygdella
(12:11):
is big on emotion, the thalamus is big on um
routing sensory stuff impairing it with emotion. Emotions play a
big role in memory, Yes, because if you pair an
experience with an emotion, it's going to have that much
more of a an impact on our neural pathways that
are formed. Yeah, that's what encoding is. Like the things
(12:33):
you remember most, you're you're you're basically leaving a trail
of bread crumbs along this pathway. If you want to
retrieve a memory, and the stronger, like you said, if
it's tied to emotion, it might be stronger and more reinforced.
Or if it's something you have to remember a lot,
that bread crumb trail is gonna be with larger pieces
of bread. Yeah, the more spot the more times it's traversed,
(12:55):
the the more well worn the path grows, the stronger
that memory is UM. And that's that's a UM A
mechanism called long term potential ation where an initial sensory
experience becomes a hard encoded memory in our long term memory.
And you could crack open like one of our brains
(13:16):
and say, see this this neural circuit right here, that's
my memory of my last birthday. See that donut that's
just there. It just started growing a few years ago.
I'm waiting for it to fully mature before I harvest it.
That was always a one of the early Simpsons had that.
I think it showed people's like thought bubbles at point
and Homer's is just a donut. Yeah, that was pretty good.
(13:39):
I can see that. Uh So, like you said this,
this is all part of the limbic system. I don't
think we said that. No we didn't, which which is, uh,
you know your reward system. You experience emotions through it. Yeah,
learning memory all that is tied to the limbic system.
And um, are our thoughts are being stored in the
(14:00):
crebral cortex? Are i should say, are episode or is
it our episodic well short term that's in this in
the cerebral cortex. Yeah, okay, um so if a yeah,
that's right. Because if you take a specific type of memory,
which we'll get to in a second, it usually gets
(14:20):
stored in the region that's responsible for processing it as
it happens in the first place. So like broke A's
area responsible for processing language. There's also your your language
related memories are stored there. You know that time that
guy shouted at you in Spanish you didn't know what
he was saying. You can crack open the Broker's area
(14:41):
and there it is. Yeah. So the cortex is where
you temporarily put it. It works with the hippocampus to
send it to Like you said, whatever part of the brain.
I didn't know that. That's interesting though, it lives where
it was originated. Total sense. Yeah again, I really just
I have a feeling that are understanding of memory is
tenuous enough that like a lot of this stuff is
(15:03):
going to change in ten years, five years, fifteen years,
But for the time being, this is our understanding. Well,
like with anything in the brain, it's just like there's
still so much mystery, you know, shrouded in it the
gray area. Uh. All right, So there's many types of
long term memory. Uh. They are as follows, and these
will come up throughout the show. Your explicit or episodic
(15:25):
memory is what we do when we study for a podcast. Basically,
it's like facts and information specific stuff, right, we read it,
we learn it, we know it. Yeah, cramming for an exam.
That's how you do it. You've got procedural or implicit Uh,
these are sensory and motor memories. That's how you know
how to make a cup of coffee. And it's it's
(15:45):
like muscle memory. Yeah, it becomes less of memory and
more something that you've done by repetition over and over.
That's why, uh, Clive make that cup of coffee, or
can play the piano. Still, Yeah, he doesn't remember how
to play the piano fingers, just do it from muscle memory. Right,
he doesn't consciously remember. He does have procedural memories exactly. Um,
(16:09):
you've got semantic memory, which is organized and categorized memories.
So it's kind of like a meta version of type
of memory. Right where like you, um, if you're thinking
about what your favorite bands are, something, you have a
file of all the bands you ever listened to that
maybe there's a subfolder in that file of the ones
(16:29):
that you've ever heard that you like, right, and all
of those are based on your experiences of listening to
led Zeppelin or you know, um Boogie Down Productions or
the Carpenters. I can go on. So when someone asks
you what your favorite band is you're scrolling through that folder, right,
and what you're doing is accessing your semantic memory, right,
(16:51):
Or you could just you could be like, look at
the T shirt, but you just default and say Pavement,
then you're good to go. Pixies for you probably how
uh Yeah, I would say these days, I would go
more with Morrissey. Oh yeah, yeah, whoa. Oh He's always
been up there, yeah, nipping at the Pixies heels. But
(17:11):
I would say Morrissey may have taken the lead recently. Yeah.
I remember we're hearing the Smiths for the first time
in like ninth grade. I was like, man, who are
these guys? They still hold up? But if you and
if you listen though, it's like, well, no, you mean
the Smiths. No, I love the Smiths. But if you
listen to Morrissey's career, like all it was was the
(17:33):
evolution of Morrisey started with the Smiths, and he just
kept going and he just hit his stride even more
after the Smiths. I like Morrissey even more than the Smiths.
Man all right, and I felt good to get off
my chest. You won't find me dissing Mars under any circumstances.
He's the man. So you've got emotional long term memory
(17:55):
that those are um well, emotional like superintense memories about
something that may have happened to you. Uh, and then
spatial which are just the spacing of an area. I
remember that in the dark when I go to the
bathroom that I have to walk around my nightstand. Oh yeah,
that's a good one. Running right into it. Man, that
will break your toe. Although that happens, and I kind
(18:16):
of I don't necessarily take issue with emotional memories being
broken out as their own thing, But it seems like
emotion is one of the drivers of memory formation, even
if it's just the slightest feeling. It seems like emotions
attached to all memories. Like it's a it's a signal
like remember this, and it's also a way it's it's
(18:38):
an aspect of memory as well, like when you recall
a memory strawberry. Um, if you have your first strawberry
after somebody mashes it in your face and like twist
your nipples and walks away, right, you're probably going to
associate that bad feeling with strawberries for a while. There's
nothing worse than strawberry. So so all all memories have
(19:04):
some amount of emotion to him, which means all memories
are emotional. But Chuck, that doesn't mean that for the
rest of your life you're gonna have kind of a
sour taste in your mouth when you're eating a sweet
strawberry because of that initial experience, because memories are subject
to change because of neural plasticity. That's right, although you
may as well like you might remember it, but I'll
(19:27):
bet you don't have the emotional experience of it over
and over again if you eat enough strawberries and experience
them in different situations and settings. Right, I guess you're right. Like,
if something has made me sick in the past, I
have an aversion to it, but but I don't power
through it, Like I just leave it there. I won't
drink Milwaukee's best beer anymore. Really get sick off that
(19:48):
man like years ago, and just the smell of it
now immediately, I'm just like, that's funny. Um, if you
wanted to, you could power through it and after enough times,
what you would be doing is activating that neural circuit,
that long term potential action and refreshing it a little bit,
changing your idea of what Milwaukee's Best is all about.
(20:13):
That's a commercial. They should send us some beer and
I'll get over it. There you, but I won't get
so drunk that I passed out and forget because we'll
get to that. That's a real thing. Yeah, that's a
kind of amnesia. It is literally, you can get amnesia
tonight if you want, no thanks, I'm going to see
Stephen Mountains tonight. Full circle. You want to remember that.
And then the third type of memory is where you
(20:36):
combine short term memory with long term memory and you
come up with working memory. UM. One example I saw
during research is when you're looking at a menu. You're
going down a menu to decide what you want to eat.
You're taking in that information from that menu, UM, and
you're creating a little bit of an episodic stimulus in
(20:56):
your short term memory and then your acts seeing your
long term memories, maybe from having pork chops before, um,
and you're comparing the two. That's your working memory. Okay,
So that's a that's a huge aspect of memory as well.
And they think as it stands right now, that it's
basically a combination of short term memory and long term memory,
(21:17):
mixing them together. And there you have your menu choice.
And that's just your day to day kind of deciding things.
That's what your working memory is. That's a very dumb
way to say it, but you know what I mean,
your day to day all right, So I guess we
can talk about an amnesia a little bit now, right. Uh,
(21:38):
forgetfulness is good, it's not a bad thing to forget. Um,
you should remember the important things. But like we said,
it frees up your brain of the the stuff we
don't need. And amnigia is nothing more than a really
bad case of the forgets brought on by It can
be brought on by a lot of things, but a
lot of time it's literally an injury to your brain. Yeah,
(22:01):
well that's neurological amnesia, which is the first kind that
we're talking about here. It can come on from a stroke. Yeah,
it can come on from your you're just not having
enough oxygen for a little while. Drugs. Drugs can bring
it on. Drugs can bring in alcohol. Yeah. What else? Uh?
Any like blunt force trauma, electro convulsive therapy. That was
(22:26):
another good episode we did. Yeah. In the case of
Clyde Wearing, he had a he had herpes and cephalitis,
a viral infection that can do it. It It destroyed his
basically cut the cord of the hippocampus and the cortex.
Well give him that analogy. That's a great analogy, the
telephone cord. Uh yeah, then this is thanks to Kristen
(22:48):
Kongner who wrote this. I don't know if we mentioned that. Um,
if your memories a telephone, the hippocampus is the phone
cord and the synapsis that we talked about are the
in the cortex. Those are the voicemail messages. So in
his case, he had damaged to his cortex I believe,
and the hippocampus, right, Yeah, he has one of the
(23:09):
more severe versions of amnesia. So because the phone cord
was cut in the hippocampus, that's why he has no
ability to form any long term memory because there's just
no pathway and the voice messages are erased essentially because
of the damage to the cortex, and there's no way
that they may be there still, but there's no way
for him to access his voicemail account any longer. So
(23:32):
he is a really bad case of neurological amnesia. And analogy.
I had Mr Telephone Man in my head that new
Addistance song. Oh yeah is to go listen to it.
It worked too. So when you die your baby's number
and you get a click every time, Mr Telephone Man song,
it is a good song. Was pretty good. Yeah, And
(23:55):
well we gone over Bill Bidevo. Well, I've dropped a
couple of references over the years that very few people notice.
Were you a Bell Bio fan? Okay a little bit?
I mean you know that wasn't really my music, but
I'm a new addition man myself. That was a big
Bobby Brown guy. So, um, with this, with neurological amnesia,
(24:18):
there is damage to the structure. Um, and it just
shuts down the whole system. Ry cuts that chord and
um we talked about all of the different ways you
can you can get that yeah, and it can be,
like we said, depending on how severe the injuries are.
It's not always completely cut, but it just may be damaged.
(24:39):
So you may have either really bad amnesia like live wearing,
or maybe not so bad right and um. Neurological amnesia
is very often permanent, but it's also very often stable
unless it's associated with the degenerative brain disease. It's usually
like after whatever event happened to you, whatever you come
to remembering or maybe after you fully recover, um, after
(25:02):
you hit that point where you're like, I don't remember
anything else or I can't form new memories after X
number of minutes or seconds or whatever. Um, it's gonna
stay like that. And we'll talk about how people with
amnesia navigate life in a little bit, and we'll talk
about the other type of amnesia, UM, the associative amnesia
(25:23):
right after this message. So, Chuck, we're talking about neurological amnesia.
That's one type and uh the other type, and there's
different ways to break them out. But the other main
type is the dissociative amnesia, which is brought on by
intense amounts of stress. Yeah, it's UM, it can be
(25:43):
a trauma. The good news is it's usually temporary and
it can associate. Uh, it can come to light in
a couple of different ways. UM. Let's say you had
some super traumatic event that can either damage your memory
as a whole because of massive amounts of cortisol from stress,
(26:05):
or it could just be the one event that you
blocked out, like a really bad mugging that scared you,
or a car accident or something you might not have
any memory just of that, right. That's actually how they
divide um or subdivide dissociative amnesia. There's a global dissociative amnesia,
which is autobiographical, which is like, who am I? What
(26:27):
happened after witnessing your family be murdered or something horrific
like that? You don't remember anything about anything? Um. The
other type of situational dissociative amnesia, where you remember yourself,
you remember who you are, your address out, everything except
that that murder that you witnessed. Yeah, which can be
a good thing. Yeah, it can be get rid of
(26:47):
that memory. You know. You could definitely interpret it as
like a safeguard by the brain, you know. Yeah. Um.
Either way, though, what's happened is, like you said, cortisol
has been released, which has been shown to affect the
hippocampus uh, and it also affects the brain's plasticity, or
(27:08):
its ability to form new memories. So basically, one way
to put it, especially with situational dissociative amnesia, is the
brain says, this is so stressful, yeah that I'm overwhelmed
with cortisol and I can't form new memories right now,
therefore this never happened. Yeah. You know one thing that
was interesting is hippopotamus is um. I saw this on
(27:29):
Animal Planet the other day. They are so stressed out, um,
especially sadly little babies that are orphaned because of poaching
for rhino horns. Did I say hippopotamus rhinoceros. Yeah, they
they they feel for the rhinoceros, the rhinoceros. I was
thinking hippocampus. I think, yeah, um, they can die from
(27:52):
too much cortisol from being stressed, like a little baby
rhino might die because their parents died just from cortisil,
like massive amounts of cortisil. We have to update or
can you die of a broken heart episode? Then I
think we just did. Okay, we can check that off
the list. That's right, Okay. Yes, stressed is a killer,
(28:13):
you know this literally um. And it can cause amnesia
and this is not um. I think a lot of people,
uh suspect that when it's not neurological, when there's not
an organic cause like a brain injury for amnesia, that
it's possibly somebody faking or something like that. No. There there,
(28:35):
they are so stressed out that the chemicals, the chemical
composition in their brain has prevented new memories from forming.
Not plastic anymore. No, Uh. The thing is is that
that the dissociative amnesia is very frequently temporary. Um. There
might be something that triggers a memory that leads to
a cascade of memories that restores the person's memory fully. Um.
(29:00):
You see that in movies too. That's a big popular
one for fiction. Yeah, it's crazy that there's like, I mean,
it's in movies that happens far more frequently, um than
in real life. But it's not terribly far off, not
because the movies are really kind of keeping it close
to reality. Just that amnesia is like, can be that crazy? Right, right, Yeah,
(29:22):
you can kind of do anything, and someone's probably had
that kind So he mentioned weaving, um Wearing. Clive Wearing
has both retrograde and antiro grade, and that is a
couple of other ways that that doctors can um categorize
It is by the type of memory he has. Both
(29:43):
retrograde means you can't remember the past and a taro
grade means you can't make the new memories. And since
he has both, he's in big trouble. H intro Grade
is a little more like the movie Memento when every
thirty or forty seconds you're weren't a new but even still, Uh,
if you haven't seen Memento, just go ahead and fast
(30:05):
forward to this part. Yeah. Um, but he wrongly remembers
his own past, which is a symptom of um retrograde
amnesia that you confabulate. You basically come up with imaginary
things your mind us to fill in the gaps, and
(30:25):
you believe them to be real, but they're not real.
It's imagined. Remember that's how he turned out at the end.
Like he wasn't the insurance adjuster. That wasn't a case,
like that was his life. Yeah. And also very especially
in that movie, very easily to be taken advantage of
the one scene with his when he was paying rent,
(30:45):
when he kept paying rent, like I was like, hey,
your rents do and yeah, I think it was a jerk.
But he has a system. We'll talk about that coming
up too. So let's let's talk about in taro grade.
And taro grade is the inability to form new memories. Uh,
And it's pretty simple. Basically, there's something wrong with the
hippocampus right then, could be permanent in which case you
(31:09):
end up like Clive Wearing and you can't form new memories,
or it could be temporary, could be drunk. That is
why UH and terograde amnesia is far more common than retrograde.
It's one reason we can easily assault our hippocampus through booze.
And as an example of how procedural memory still stays intact.
(31:31):
You can walk and talk and move around and everything,
and then wake up the next morning be like, how
did I get here? And no matter how hard you try,
you're not going to remember specific details if you fully
blacked out, because when you were fully blacked out, your
hippocampus was no longer taking all this information and forming memories,
like they just don't exist. And that's in terograde amnesia.
(31:54):
And it depends on who you are. Some people like
you might have an alcohol blackout way easier than others.
But that if you're blacking out from alcohol, you're drinking
too much, you know. Yeah, even if you're someone with
a super low tolerance and blacks out really easily. Yeah,
blacking out, it's blacking out. It's the line for everyone.
That doesn't mean you're passing out. You're still doing stuff, right,
(32:14):
and saying stuff, you're blacked out, You're blacked out. But um,
it can be kind of tricky because if you think
about it, you wake up the next morning and you're like,
how did I get here? What happened? And by that
time last night was the past, which makes you think, oh,
that's retrograde amnesia. Know that amnesia is related to your
ability to form memories or access old memories. So with
(32:36):
antaro grade, your ability to form new memories in the present,
which was while you were drunk and blacked out, that
was antaro grade amnesia. That's right. Retrograde amnesia is totally
different because it is the destruction of those voicemail messages
of your past, yes, which is super sad. Um Yeah,
because what's life of It's not a collection of memories
(32:56):
you know and hope for the future. Look at you
and this micro second right now. Uh. With retrograde, it's um.
If it's severe, basically, your new memory or your most
recent memories, which aren't as strong and reinforced yet, are
the ones to go first. And then depending on how
severe your retrograde amnesias, it will go further and further
(33:17):
back in your little memory file and start destroying them.
Or if you're the case of wearing, if you have
a super bad you might not remember your past at all. Right,
but you guys remember his wife. He does remember his wife.
And that theory um or that it's called, is that
Ribot's law. Alright, bot I would say, ribo rebo. It
(33:38):
looks pretty French. It does look French. Uh. That is
that that pattern of destroying those newer memories first and
then going back and back depending on how severe it is.
And there's a there's a reasoning to it behind the
whole thing. It's that you're your more recent memories haven't
had years to potentiate and become these well worn paths,
(33:59):
so they're easier to wipe out than your longer term ones.
But it's totally different retrograde amnesia because it it can
attack those parts of your brain where um, those memories
are stored, So it might not have anything to do
with any kind of damage to your hippocampus. It can say,
(34:20):
attack the part of your brain where um again, the
language memories are stored in your broker's area. Yeah, Like
if you have a stroke, you might not remember how
to speak, and that means that broke a's area has
been damaged via lack of blood flow and oxygen. That
might be different. That might be like your you lose
your ability to speak. I wonder if it does have
(34:42):
to do with memory, though, now that you mention it,
I don't know, huh. Like when my grandfather had a stroke,
he still talked, but they weren't words, but he thought
he was talking, Like in his head he was saying,
now you turn left up here to go to the
gas station to his wife, but it came out as
walking walking You can balk and b super bark and barking.
But that was unsettling. It was sad and unsettling. How
(35:05):
how long did he lives? Like the frustration too? Because
in his head he was saying the right words, But
could he hear himself, like what was coming out of
his I don't know, because he couldn't tell us or
he could see on your faces that he wasn't saying
what he was saying. I don't. I mean I was
pretty young, so this is all kind of distant. But
how long did he live like that? Um? I feel
like a few years? Yeah? Did he could he? Right?
(35:28):
I don't remember that usually that's separate. Oh, yeah, so
but he could write still you should find out. I'm curious. Yeah,
I should ask my mom. Was he a good guy?
I used the best? Yeah. Well, I'm sorry, Chuck. That's right,
it happens. It's in my blood line too, so I'm
sure the same thing will happen to me. Is it really? Well,
I will prop you up in front of the microphone
and we'll do a podcast like that. Neil just translate
(35:48):
for me. Yeah, that's very enough to be like I
think he's saying he likes paid me. Uh, you could
just default to that and I'd always be sort of happy,
And that's I was really saying. I was hungry, but
you go yeah. Um. It was weird though, Like his
language was very consistent. It had that saying the familiar,
like there's a lot of walking walking like that sound
(36:10):
like he had made up his own language. It's really
interest man, that's interesting. And the thing is that's how
they figured out that different parts of the brain are
responsible for different Um, I guess different aspects of our
personality your life, Like speaking is different than hearing, yeah,
and writing, right, And it's like if you're just because
(36:32):
you can't talk and form words, doesn't mean you can't
hear and understand words, or write words right, or think
in your head the right words even whether they're not
coming out right. Uh So, with both of these kinds
of amnesia, uh we should point out that your explicit
or episodic memory is what you're losing, but you're implicit
(36:52):
or procedural memory is usually still intact as long as
you're cerebellum is good. That's why you might be able
to make the cup of coffee or ride a bike,
these things that are just ingrained in your in your brain. Right,
And that's why clid Waren can play the piano, but
he can't remember who his favorite composer is. So wearing
is a really good example of how somebody can live
(37:14):
with amnesia. Number One, he has an amazing caretaker, his wife,
who you know, basically she takes care of him. Yeah,
I bet she does little things though, like just where
she wants to eat that night? Right now, we ate
there last night. I'm not going there again, right, he's
like we did, or she can really get him going
where every time he looks like he's like her, she's
kiss right, you know, just to just to delight him
(37:38):
a little bit. It would be fun to do that exactly. Um.
But yes, he has a good caretaker, which is important. Yes,
because there's no treatment for amnesia. There's no right. They
can't inject you with something all of a sudden your
memories come back. So most um, most treatments for amnesia
(37:59):
deal with figuring out how to navigate life under this
the new change to the way you remember things. Yeah,
it's all about systems. You have to have a system
in place that you don't deviate from. UM. In Clive's case,
in the case of a minto, he's tattoos and polaroids
and notes for himself. Yeah, sticky notes, And that's what
weiring does. Basically keeps a journal and like I said,
(38:21):
he crosses things out as it goes, so he knows
where he is in the day. Right. He also can
look at his journal and says, now, I woke up
three times already, I don't need to um. He Also,
the other aspect of UM forming routines is that they
involve habits, and the habits member your procedural memory still intact,
(38:44):
so you end up like just knowing. How does he
know to get up and go to the journal if
his memory refreshes every few minutes for every few seconds.
It's because he's formed a habit, a procedural memory of
there's a journal and you should go to it. So
he knows what we would call instinctively um. Through his
procedural memory of using the journal over and over again.
(39:05):
He's formed to have it. So that helps big time. Also,
smartphones help big time too, because he can access all
sorts of stuff, set reminders. He's got a calendar right there,
basically what most of us do, except taken to the
inth degree. You know, like I rely. I have a
terrible memory. You know this, So I rely heavily on
calendars and notes and reminders. Um. And I don't even
(39:28):
have amnesia as far as I know. Can't you imagine
like every time he pulls his iPhone and he's like, wow, right,
look at this thing. You know, it's reminding me and
it's a computer in my hand. Yeah, the future is here.
His wife is so sick of hearing him say the
future is here. We really poked fund of this guy
a lot. Yeah. I hope he's not listening to this
(39:50):
so he won't remember anyway. Oh there it was, Uh,
psychotherapy if you have dis associate of amnesia can help out.
I imagine that's a tough case to tackle, because not
only do you have to get to the root of this,
like you have to, you have to figure out everything
(40:11):
else first, you know, and then then then sort through
this lost You have to regenerate the bio autobiographical information
and then figure out which part of it is the
real problem. So it's like this huge, massive layer on
top of a normal case that's already a very pronounced
one because the stressful event was so bad that it
(40:32):
wiped out their ability to form memories. That's a good point,
that's gotta be. I'm sure not every psychiatrist can handle that.
I would say you'd go to a specialist or something
like that, an amnesia specialist. Uh do you think there
are those? Sure? Well, I'd like to hear from you
if you listen to the podcast and early shout out
if you have anesia from drinking too much, uh, Corsicov syndrome,
(40:55):
you should quit drinking so much and maybe take some
B one because because what's it called thiamine deficiency? Yeah,
that's all it is, is is vitamin B. Don't you remember
you said that? Um? I can't remember which episode it was,
but we were talking about hardcore alcoholics degenerate basically physically mentally. Yeah,
(41:19):
that's that. And part of it is a thiamine deficiency
which leads to amnesia, which can be treated by laying
off the sauce and taking b one. It's so sad.
Have you ever known someone that was truly like pickled themselves? No,
it's sad, especially when you know it's from drinking. You know,
it's a it's like a form of dementia really yea
(41:41):
from booze. And I like to drink, you know, I'm
not like poopling the whole thing, but like when you're
blacking out and forgetting things and getting the d t s. Yeah,
that's like, that's bad. I know that's obvious, but we
should point that out because we have kids that listen
to this. It's true, you know, all right, So chuck habits.
(42:02):
Oh I wrote another one. I wrote a review of
a woman who who wrote a memoir and she had amnesia, huge,
big time amnesia. Was it short? Um? No? But her
the first line is something like everything you're about to read,
I don't remember. It was told to me. She was
playing with her kid and the kid. She was spinning
(42:24):
him around, and I guess he knocked the ceiling fan
loose and it was like poorly installed, and it came
down on her head and it was like Gilligan's Island
level amnesia and forgets things everything. Yes, she has like
world class amnesia, almost on a Clive Wearing level. Um.
And she wrote this, this memoir, and in it she's
(42:47):
basically saying, like, how she navigates through life with amnesia,
and a lot of it is just faking it. Yeah,
she didn't lose her ability to pick up on social cues,
so she can pick up on what's expected of her,
and she can kind of guess, um, probably. Yeah. She
says she has no idea why people celebrate birthdays or
holidays or anything, but she still does it because she
(43:09):
realizes she's expected to. So she's no, it's not with her,
surely they probably is confabulation. She doesn't believe what she's imagining.
She's faking it, and apparently she's so good at it
that people forget she has amnesia. Um. But she's saying like, no,
I I really genuinely don't remember. I'm just good at
making it seem like I do. So I can fit
(43:30):
in must be so weird and frustrating. It sounds pretty weird,
like if to have to sing Happy Birthday at a
birthday party and she's like, n singing this song. I
know I'm supposed to do it, but I don't know why,
why these people do this? Yeah? Wow, alright, So Chuck,
you want to talk about amnesia detection, which seems like, oh,
(43:50):
that person can't remember anything, they have amnesia, or they
just got hit on the head with a coconut right,
well for wearing. Uh, he had a headache. That was
the first thing that happened. The next thing that happened
a couple of days later, Like you said earlier, he
could remember his daughter's name. So warning signs flashing at
that point, and it really spiraled out of control from
there in his case. Uh. Sometimes just super obvious. Um,
(44:15):
like you said, if you injure your head and you
can't remember things, then you've got some form of amnesia. Um.
Can you recall your past events? Uh? Do you confabulate?
Do you confabulate? And the difference between a confabulation and alive,
by the way, is there's intent with a lie. Right
this person, it doesn't realize they're filling in the gaps
(44:37):
with imagined stuff, or if they do, they don't want
to think about it. There. Yeah, there's no malice involved.
They're just trying to be normal. Uh. You might have
tremors or be uncoordinated, You might be confused and disoriented,
could be in a feug state, which is where you're
wandering around. Yeah, that's with the disassociated identity that can
(44:58):
be present for sure. You remember and John McCain entered
that fugue state in the two thousand and eight debate
against Obama. Did you see that? Yeah? Man, I couldn't
believe it. Even Obama was like, what is this guy doing?
He even he made that face and I think he
pointed his thumb off to this thing. He went to
a different place. Brief fuge state. Uh. One thing you
(45:18):
want to do is get a cat scan or an
m r I or both and see a doctor immediately,
you know, and find out what the heck is going on. Yeah, Like,
don't don't. If you can't remember things that you usually can,
don't mess around. It could be a sign of early
Alzheimer's UM it could be a sign of mild cognitive impairment.
(45:38):
They're both kinds of dementia, Yeah, which I want to
mess around with that. You can get amnesia from those,
or it can be a symptom of dementia. But um,
dementia and amnesia are not one and the same. Um,
So chuck, why don't you see people wearing like, uh,
prevent amnesia t shirts on like a five k run
walk to fight amnesia? I don't know, because there's no
(46:02):
way to prevent it, aside from maybe wearing a helmet
when you're riding a bike, avoiding trees with loose coconuts. Um,
doing what you can to prevent a stroke or cut
down on your risk of stroke, uh, and steering clear
of highly stressful events. Apparently, there's really not a lot
you can do with amnesia. It's bad luck. Is something
(46:23):
pretty much something that happens to you that causes it,
that's right, UM. But again, there are possible they're working
on some treatments. There's no pill now, but they're working
on treatments in the the cutting edge field that's starting
the yield possibly results that could be used to treat amnesia.
(46:43):
Are UM are studying fear extinction the opposite, they're trying
to induce amnesia. And PTSD patients, which I think we
talked about this in our PTSD episodes. I think so
if you've ever seen the movie Eternal Sunshine The Spotless Mind,
that was one of the greatest that on no and
I actually had people say, how was that not on there?
(47:04):
That it was a good movie. We'll call it one
on one okay. UM. And in that movie, UH, people
would pay money to have certain in the in the
case of the movie, certain people remove from their mind,
like a former girlfriend that was so painful you just
wanted no trace over in your memory. UM. But they
are researching that at La Doo Laboratory at n y
(47:27):
U in New York. UH, they did an experiment where
with rats where they would associate a sound with them
being shocked, and they found that in adult rats, um
when they heard that sound, of course, they would freeze
up like they were gonna get shocked, but in baby
rats they didn't UM. And what they learned was after
about three weeks of age, a sort of a molecular
(47:50):
sheath would form around the cells in the amygdala. So
they found a drug that would dissolve that sheath and
basically leave it prone to UH manipulation. Replasticization. Yeah, and
then they basically found that if that sheath has gone
and dissolved, that they could erase fear memories and the
(48:11):
adult rats were not affected any longer by that sound,
the buzzing sound. And they don't know about humans yet,
but there there, that's obviously why they're studying it. Well,
the there just don't want to learn about rats in
their memory. Um. And we we know a pretty decent
amount of human in memory formation um, thanks to a
(48:33):
specific patient named Well. For many many years until just
a couple of years ago, he was known only as
h M. And he was a man who now that
he's died, his identity has been revealed as Henry Mollison. Yeah.
He was a lot like Clive Wearing. His memory didn't
refresh quite as frequently. But um, he was the initial
(48:54):
memory patient. Yeah. He was had a bike wreck when
he was a kid and was leptic from then on
in those seizures. To relieve those seizures, they removed part
of his amigdala, I'm sorry, all of his amgdala and
most of his hippocampus and it stopped the seizures, which
is great. But then they found out, hey, we've got
(49:15):
a really good memory basient on our hands now, right,
because he just couldn't remember, and he was also a
very good, easy going guy. They studied him for life, yes,
from like nineteen fifty three on, I think in nineteen
fifty five on. Yeah, and by on we mean to
two thousand and eight. He just died semi recently and
they're still slicing his brain apart and sending it out
(49:35):
to people to study UM. And he also his brain,
I should say, proved that memory is not one long circuit.
The processes in one long circuit, where like with a
string of Christmas lightbulbs, if one bowl burns out, the
whole thing does. Because he could remember stuff from his
past up to the time when he got the surgery,
(49:56):
he just couldn't form new memories. So they figured out
that UM long term memory storage and retrieval was distinct
from new memory formation, which as we've seen you and
I explained fully. Yeah, they should do. I wish more
people like Henrietta Axe and and Hm were honored, like
these people should have like statues in front of hospitals,
(50:18):
these people who suffered for the greater good, you know,
as far as research and scientifics like those twins that
were separated by the New York Family Services for Twins Studies. Yeah, yeah,
those kids need some statues or on the box, the
big girl in the box. Now the awful the most
awful case ever be a Skinner's kid. Was that the
(50:42):
one that they basically tortured as a child very recently,
like she was recently discovered. I think it's a boy.
I heard about a girl who was kept in a
closet for her whole life and then in Texas and
I remember that too, Yeah, but not to study as abuse, right, yes,
to abuse. Now, there was some I know we've talked
(51:02):
about him before, some boy who was purposefully sort of
abuse for the purposes of research. Oh are you talking about?
Like they didn't have his real name and know who
it was? For me, little Albert, Little Albert where they
they studied fear extinction in him by making him scared
of things. Yeah, yeah, he definitely deserves a statue. See
you remember that and I didn't. So let's um, you
(51:24):
said something that that they couldn't remember his name I
think is what triggered it. Yeah, so uh and that
is uh, that's part of encoding. I encoded it it's
right with the idea little Albert. They didn't remember his
original name. Your trail of bread crumbs is more solid.
So let's talk pop culture real quick man. Good movies, Memento,
you mentioned Internal Sunshimes, follow us mine what else? Um?
(51:46):
One of my favorites is Mulholland Drive. I don't remember
amnis of being a part of that, but yeah, the
the one girl couldn't remember anything. Is it the main character? Yeah,
the burnette Vanilla Sky. Yeah. I did not care for
with it. I know everybody didn't like it. I didn't
like it. There was original Open my Eyes. I think
(52:06):
it was the original Spanish language film that was based
on it was really good. Cat. What else I don't know?
Oh well, Jason Bourne, Yeah he had amnesia. Yeah, um,
fifty first states. That was a cute one about amnesia.
It's a cute movie. I didn't see it. And if
you ice to see it, okay, um, And if you
(52:26):
reverse your perspective a little bit Groundhog Day where Bill
Murray has a tremendously excellent memory and everyone else has
amnesia day, And I think this is a great time
to acknowledge the great, great Harold Ramos of Groundhog Day
and Stripes and Animal House and Caddyshack and Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters. Yeah,
(52:49):
what a loss. He defined comedy for our generation. He
died at sixty nine, which is so young, so young. Yeah,
and checked, there's no way we could do an amnesia
episode without mentioned Benjamin Kyle. You remember him. He was
found in two thousand four in a dumpster, naked and
unconscious in Richmond Hill, Georgia, and he came. We've talked
(53:09):
about him before and like one of those one minute
b s things, um, and he cannot remember anything. He
has complete autobiographical episodic amnesia, retrograde amnesia, and nothing is helping.
They've put him on NPR, they put him on CNN,
they put him on ABC, They've put him on News Channel.
(53:31):
They've done stories on him around the world. He has
a website called Finding Benjamin b E N J A
M A n dot com and they want to figure
out who this guy is. He wants to know who
he is. They have not figured it out. The case
is still cold, so he's not faking it. No, if
he's faking it, he has totally given himself over the
(53:52):
idea that he will never be found out. Because he
has put himself out there. He lives in a bureaucratic
limbo because he doesn't have a Social Security number. He
can't get a new one because he's he's like sixty
years old, and the Feds are like, what do you
need a new use your old one. We gave you
one before. Um. And he has no idea there's a
documentary that's coming out about him, or that might be
(54:13):
out now. Um. But yeah, it's totally legitimate case of
full retrograde amnesia waking up in a dumpster naked in Georgia.
And the reason he's called Benjamin Kyle is because he's
pretty sure his first name was Benjamin. But um, when
he was taken to the hospital, there was already a
John Doe there, so they called him b K because
(54:33):
they was found behind a Burger King, So he took
the name Benjamin Kyle. It's his name, could have been
Mickey d could be anything. Wow, Well, faking it is
a thing, I think, Um. I think Hess, Rudolph Hess,
the Nazi. I didn't look this up, but I think
I remember somewhere that he faked amnesia to get out
(54:54):
of his war crimes. I believe it that guy was
s ob all around. Yeah, here's a Nazi. I know.
I think he did fake amnesian. I think he even
fooled his doctors for a time, but then later admitted
that he had faked it. I might be wrong, did generate.
I didn't do specific research on that, so we'll see.
He was a black shirt though, No way, he was
a brown shirt. I got it wrong again. Brown shirts
(55:16):
with the German black shirts were Italian. All right. Uh,
well that's amnisia. You got anything else, man? If you
want to read more about it, you should type amnesia
into the search bar at how stuff works dot com
and it will bring up this article. Since I said
search parts, time for a listener mail. Uh. This is
from a termite expert. He was a pest control operator
(55:38):
for seven and a half years and on the board
of the New York State Pest Management Association. Let's tie up. Hey, guys,
when you talked about a termidicide treatment, you stated it
is injected into the colony. Uh. This isn't quite right.
Could be misleading to the average homeowner. Uh, it makes
them think that the colony will be killed off. What
really happens is that termida side is injected to form
(56:02):
a barrier on a few inches of treated soil around
the foundation of the house. When termites come into contact
with it, they shortly die. Eventually, the colony realizes something
is wrong and send out alarm pheromones to uh for
the others to avoid it. As to the bait, you'd stated,
it might leach into the soil, this makes for good
radio or podcasting. But again it's an alarm to the homeowner. Uh,
(56:25):
that's not necessarily true. Bait is solid and small and
it will not leach, but it will explode. When I
was in the business, there were two types of bait.
The first was a poison like bait for mice you
put in your home. We didn't use that, but it
is a but that's about it and simple to understand. Uh.
The idea is hopefully they will realize something is wrong
(56:46):
and not come back. The second type of bait, which
we used, interfered with the molting process. You could actually
see them turn a milky white. As young termites could
not grow. The colony died as a nation would die
if no new children were born, Like the movie Children
of Men. That's a good movie. This program was the
only one at the time that would eliminate a colony.
(57:06):
I hate to nitpick. You guys run a good show,
and I just want to see it done right. And
that is from Sean Duffy Pittsburgh, a term my expert
who likes to pick nits. Hey, thanks Sean, right, Yeah, uh,
we appreciate that. Actually, I'm just teasing. Uh. If you
want to tell us something we misstated, slightly or otherwise,
(57:28):
you can let us know. Join us on Twitter at
s y s K podcast is our handle. Join us
on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know, Send
us an email The Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com.
Check out our YouTube channel just search Josh and Chuck,
and as always, join us at our home on the web,
the Luxurious State Stuff you Should Know dot com for
(57:54):
more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it
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