SYSK Selects: How Amnesia Works

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 in this classic episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi friends, it's me Josh, and for this week's s
Y s K Select, I've chosen our episode on amnesia.
I'm not gonna make any sort of joke here. You
can just insert your own instead. I will describe this
as a great, thick episode that um is about an
astoundingly interesting topic. And it's one of those topics where

(00:21):
the movies actually get their depictions of this stuff right,
because amnesia is just that bizarre. So sit in, buckle
up and listen to this, possibly again, possibly for the
first time. Who can remember these things? Sorry? Welcome to
Stuff You Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm

(00:49):
Josh Clark and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant and Jerry
and uh, it's Stuff you Should Know the Rodeo. Yeah. Ironically,
I asked if we've done a podcast on memory, and
neither 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 anything.

(01:11):
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
once while we come up with one of those stupid
non how X works titles, so that just throws it
off even further. Right, Like we may have like named
it like a a podcast to remember boom boom mnemonic

(01:36):
device bitching. Yeah, we totally did one on memory. Wow,
good job, thank you. That 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.

(01:57):
Amnesia's uh sometimes it's like TV and movies, but not usually,
Uh it can be. Yeah, but yeah, that's a very
rare case. So rare that, um, whoever has that kind
of amnesia gets to be the intro for our podcasts.
Who a guy named Clive Wearing? Yeah? Man, this dude, Yeah,

(02:22):
I feel sorry for him. Did you see the cover
of the book. He has this look at his face
like 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. He's a musician
and a musicologist, and he is the He is the
man with the world's poorest memory, which means Oliver Sacks

(02:46):
sleeps on his couch. Yeah you know, um, and 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

(03:08):
refreshes like that. So um, this guy, Uh, there was
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

(03:29):
no memory whatsoever of eating the apple. Um, he may
not even he probably he doesn't remember getting the apple, right,
He just knows there's an apple core in his hand now,
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

(03:50):
movie Memento, uh, and it had some excerpts and it
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 right
on where he is in the day. And then it

(04:10):
takes like a really jarring turn. Once in a while,
I'll be like n twelve, I no longer trust my wife. Yeah,
there's some weird guy on my couch here. 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
s I don't know what you're talking about. That would

(04:30):
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 sure of having m nisa, like Clive wearing
has UM. Imagine coming to and you're a genneral and
still pumping, and you feel the sensation of anger. You
have no idea. Why. Yeah, that that is what happens

(04:53):
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 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

(05:13):
he'll play it well. But then when he finishes, you
can say, oh, what was that piece? And he will
say what peace? And that's that. Yeah. He he has
both retrograde and in tarro grade amnesia, which is pretty
rare to have both of those at once. Um, and
what we'll get to what all that means. But uh,

(05:34):
and we'll get to why as well that he can
go make a cup of coffee. We're going to get
to it. You know, we already have. Oh that's a
nice tease. 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 was the headache. And then
all of a sudden, he's like, what's your name kid? Right?

(05:56):
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,
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,

(06:19):
we all four memories following similar um constructs. But for
each individual person, what we remember, what makes us remember something, um,
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,

(06:44):
I never wondered that, but now I am, And it's fascinating.
You haven't never wondered that? Really? Oh yeah, 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

(07:06):
are slightly different, Like all of those little nuances, like
what's green to me? It's not necessarily green to you,
even though it really is because we both say lights 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 point and be like that's green.

(07:28):
You go, now that'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,
don't be dumb on color blindness. Dogs being color blind? Right,
they're not. They're not. No, No, they see how to
prove that they see a spectrum? I can't remember. You'll

(07:50):
have to watch. They don't be dumb on it. Um. Okay,
So let's talk about the memory process that humans typically follow,
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

(08:11):
you get rid of what you don't if you if
you didn't, you would be like Mary lou Henterer from Taxi.
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 autobiographical, though, but for these people,

(08:35):
you say June one, six and Merrily Lou Henner 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 cop 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,

(08:58):
Like she literally members everything that's ever happened to her.
So that's cool that she remembers that cops salad because
it was probably pretty good, pretty tough to screw up
the cops salad. Uh, Sacks trip. That's fun. So that's good.
But if she were if she had um a low
lighting inhibition where all of the things like the click

(09:23):
of of UM, a lightbulb turning on, the buzzing from
somebody's electric razor next door, the sound of water rushing,
the look of everything, the feel of everything, all of
that 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, is

(09:46):
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 informa ation up
to thirty seconds, which sounds to me like a statement
that is going to be utterly debunked as ridiculous in

(10:08):
ten years. You understand memory more for the time being.
That's our concept of short term memory. It does seem
sort of like a stab. Yeah, a stab at something.
It's overly concise. Yeah, you know, agreed. So that's short
term memory and short term memories basically just holding immediate
information in the front of your mind, um figure totively

(10:31):
in literally yeah. Uh. 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.

(10:54):
You might smell something you would not hear that. That's true,
you're an sp D guy. Uh. 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

(11:16):
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. Uh.

(11:38):
And whether or not it becomes a long term memory
is whether or not you need to remember that and
encode it. 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 thirty seconds

(12:01):
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 nanosecond 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. Yeah, technically probably,
I guess. So that's pretty deep thought though after that, green,

(12:25):
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 amygdala is big on emotion,

(12:45):
the thalamus is big on um routing sensory stuff and
pairing 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 you remember most, you're you're

(13:08):
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
going to be with larger pieces of bread. Yeah. The
more spot, the more times it's traversed, the the more

(13:29):
well worn the path grows, the stronger that memory is UM.
And that's that's a UM A mechanism called long term
potential action 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 and say, see

(13:50):
this this neural circuit right here, that's my memory of
my last birthday. Yeah. See that doughnut 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 one point,
and Homer's is just a donut. Yeah, that was pretty good.

(14:11):
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

(14:32):
cerebral 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

(14:53):
stored in the region that's responsible for processing it as
it happens in the first place. So like Broker's area
responsible for processing language, there's also your your language related
memories are stored there. Yeah. Yeah, you know the time
that guy shouted at you in Spanish you didn't know
what he was saying. You can crack open the Broker's
area and there it is. Yeah. So the cortex is

(15:16):
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. Mixed 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 going to change in ten years, five years,

(15:38):
fifteen years, but for the time being, this is our understanding. Well,
like with anything of the brain, it's just like there's
still so much mystery, you know, it's 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 memory is what we do we study for a podcast. Basically,

(16:01):
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
like muscle memory. Yeah, it becomes less of memory and
more something that you've done by repetition over and over.

(16:23):
That's why, uh, Clive make that cup of coffee, or
can play the piano. Still, Yeah, he does remember how
to play the piano. His fingers just do it from
muscle memory. Right, he doesn't consciously remember. He does have
procedural memories exactly. Um, you've got semantic memory, which is

(16:44):
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, right,
you have a file of all the bands you ever
listened to that and maybe there's a subfolder in that
file of the ones that you've ever heard that you like, right,

(17:05):
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 does, you're scrolling
through that folder, right, and what you're doing is accessing
your semantic memory. Right. Or you could just say Pavement.

(17:26):
You could be like, look at the T shirt, but
you just default and say Pavement and you're good to go.
Pixies for you, probably, huh 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 I would say Morrisey may have
taken the lead recently. Yeah, I remember we're hearing the

(17:48):
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 evolution of Morris. He started with the Smiths

(18:08):
and he just kept going and he just hit his
stride even more after the Smiths. Morris even more than
the Smith's man all right, and it felt good to
get off my chest. You won't find me dissing Mars
under any circumstances. Why would. He's the man. So you've
got emotional long term memory that those are um well

(18:30):
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 the good one,
running right into it. Man, that'll break your toe. Although
that happens, and I kind of I don't necessarily take

(18:51):
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 emotion is 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 an aspect of memory as well,

(19:13):
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 tuffs. So

(19:34):
so all all memories have 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.

(19:56):
That's right, although you may as well like you might
remember it, but I'll 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 I don't power through it, like I just leave
it there. I won't drink Milwaukee's Best beer anymore. Really

(20:20):
get sick off that man like years ago, and just
the smell of it now immediately, I'm just like bo.
That's funny, you know, 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 ation and refreshing it a little bit, changing

(20:41):
your idea of what Milwaukee's Best is all about. But
that's a commercial. They should send us some beer and
I'll get over it. You. But I won't get so
drunk that I pass out and forget, because we'll get
to that. That's a real thing. Yeah, it's a kind
of amnesia. It is literally, you can get amnesia tonight
if you want things. I'm going to see Stephen Maltamus

(21:02):
tonight full circle. You want to remember that? And then
the third type of memory is where you 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

(21:25):
creating a little bit of an episodic stimulus in your
short term memory, and then you're accessing your long term memories,
maybe from having pork chops before, UM, and you're comparing
the two. That's your working memory. 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

(21:48):
of short term memory and long term memory, 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
you're working memory is. Yeah, 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, Yeah, Uh,

(22:11):
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 amnesia 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.

(22:34):
Well that's neurological amnesia. Yeah, 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. Drug Yeah,
drugs can bring it on. Drugs can bring in alcohol. Yeah.
What else? Uh, any like blunt force trauma, Yeah, electro

(22:57):
convulsive therapy. That was another good episode he did. Yeah.
In the case of Clyde Wearing, he had a he
had her pies encephalitis, a viral infection that can do
it. It It destroyed his basically cut the chord of the
hippocampus and the cortex. We'll give him that. The analogy.
That's a great analogy, the telephone cord. Uh. Yeah. Then

(23:20):
this is thanks to Kristen Kongner who wrote this. I
don't know if we mentioned that. Um, if your memories
a telephone, the hippocampus is the phone chord, 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,

(23:40):
he has one of the 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 they may be they're still but
there's no way for him to access his voicemail account

(24:03):
any longer. So he has a really bad case of
neurological amnesia and analogy. I had Mr Telephone Man in
my head that New Addition song. Oh yeah, yeah, boys,
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, it's a good song. It

(24:25):
is a good song. Neitherdition was pretty good. Yeah, and
well we gone over Bill Bidevo when I've dropped a
couple of references over the years. Yeah that very few
people notice. Were you a Bell Bidevo 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

(24:46):
big Bobby Brown guy. So, UM, with this, with neurological amnesia,
there is damage to the structure. Um, and it just
shuts down the whole system right cuts that chord and
um we talked about all of the different ways you
can you can get that. Yeah, and it can be,

(25:06):
like we said, depending on how severe the injuries are.
It's not always completely cut, but it just may be damaged.
So you may have either really bad amnesia like c
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

(25:30):
you come to remembering, or maybe after you fully recover, um,
after 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. M So, Chuck, we're talking about

(26:12):
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 dissociative amnesia, which is brought on
by intense amounts of stress. Yeah, it's um, it can
be a trauma. The good news is it's usually temporary
and it can associate. Uh, it can come to light

(26:34):
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 corticol
from stress. Or it could just be the one event
that you blocked out, like a really bad mugging that

(26:55):
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 happened? After witnessing your family be murdered
or something horrific like that, you don't remember anything about anything. Um.

(27:19):
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
that memory. You know, you could definitely interpret it as
like a safeguard by the brain, you know. Um. Either way, though,

(27:41):
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 its ability to
form new memory. So basically, one way to put it,
especially with situational dissociative amnesia, is the brain says, this

(28:01):
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 Animal Planet the other day. They
are so stressed out, um, especially sadly little babies that

(28:21):
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 too much cortisol, from being stressed
so sad like a little baby rhino might die because

(28:42):
their parents died just from cortisol, Like massive amounts of
cortisol 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. You know this? Yeah? Literally, um,
and it can cause amnesia and this is not um.

(29:04):
I think a lot of people 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, 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.

(29:29):
The thing is is that that the associative 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. 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

(29:51):
that happens far more frequently, um than in real life.
But it's not terribly far off, not because the movie
these are really kind of keeping it close to reality.
Just that amnesia is like, can be that crazy, right, right, Yeah,
you can kind of do anything, and someone's probably had
that kind right. So he mentioned weaving um wearing. Clive

(30:14):
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
retro grade 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. Uh. Antro

(30:38):
grade is a little more like the movie Memento when
every thirty or forty seconds you're born anew but even still, Uh,
if you haven't seen Memento, just go ahead and fast
forward through this part. Yeah. Um, but he he wrongly
remembers his own past. Yeah, which is a symptom of

(30:58):
um retrograde amnesia that you can fabulate. You basically come
up with imaginary things your mind us to fill in
the gaps, and 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.

(31:21):
And uh also very especially in that movie, very easily
to be taken advantage of the one scene with this
when he was paying rent, when he kept paying rent,
like I was like, hey, your rents do and yeah,
I think I was a jerk, But he has a system.
We'll talk about that coming up to So let's let's
talk about in taro grade. And taro grade is the

(31:42):
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 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 tarograde amnesia

(32:02):
is far more common than retrograde. It's one reason we
can easily assault our hippocampus through booze. Yeah. And as
an example of how procedural memory still stays intact, 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,

(32:23):
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 saying tarograde amnesia.
And it depends on who you are. Some people like
might have an alcohol blackout way easier than others. But

(32:43):
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 a line for everyone. That doesn't
mean you're passing out. You're still doing stuff right 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,

(33:06):
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
antaro grade, your ability to form new memories in the present,
which was while you were drunk and blacked out, right,

(33:26):
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
you know and hope for the future. Look at you
and this micro second right now. Uh. With retrograde, it's

(33:48):
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 at amnesia as it'll go further
and further 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

(34:10):
past at all, right, but you just remember his wife.
He does remember his wife. And that theory um or
that it's called is that Ribot's law, r I bot
I would say, Ribo rebo. It 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

(34:32):
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, 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

(34:53):
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, 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,

(35:16):
and that means that broke his 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 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

(35:37):
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 duke and walking
by super bark and walking all. But that was unsettling.
It was sad and unsettling. How how long did he
looks 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,

(35:57):
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? Yeah?
Did he could? He? Right? I don't remember that. Usually
that's separate. Oh yeah, so buddy could write still you
should find out. I'm curious. Yeah, I should ask my mom?

(36:19):
Was he a good guy? I used the best? Yeah? Well,
I'm sorry, Chuck. That's right. It happens. It's in my
bloodline 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 and you'll just translate for me. Yeah,
that's very enough to be like I think he's saying
he likes paved me. Uh, you could just default to
that and not always be sort of happy, and that's fine.

(36:42):
I was really saying I was hungry, but you go welcome. 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 like he made up
his own language sort of. It's really interesting. That's interesting.
And the thing is that's how they figured out that
different parts of the brain are responsible for different Um,

(37:07):
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 you can't talk or
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

(37:30):
point out that your explicit or episodic memory is what
you're losing, but you're implicit 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 Waring can play the piano, but he can't remember

(37:51):
who his favorite composer is now, So wearing is a
really good example of how somebody can live 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, Like, no, we ate
there last night, I'm not going there again, Right, He's

(38:12):
like we did. Or she can really get him going
where every time he looks at he's like her, she's
kiss right, she's kissed, you know, just to just to
delight him a little bit. It would be fun to
do that, Yeah, 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

(38:36):
something all of a sudden your memories come back. So most, um,
most treatments for amnesia 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 and the case of a minto, he's

(38:58):
tattoos and polaroids, yeah, and notes for himself, Yeah, sticky notes.
And that's what weiring does. Basically keeps a journal and
like I said, he crosses things out as he 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
stop writing that. Um He Also the other aspect of

(39:20):
UM forming routines is that they involve habits, and the
habits remember your procedural memory still intact, 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

(39:42):
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. He's formed a habit.
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 nth degree. You know,

(40:05):
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 have amnesia as far as I know.
Can't you imagine like every time he pulls his iPhone out,
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

(40:26):
hearing him say the future is here. We really pooked
fund of this guy a lot. Yeah. I hope he's
not listening to this so he won't remember anyway. Oh,
there it was. Uh. Psychotherapy, if you have dissociative amnesia,
can help out. I imagine that's a tough case to

(40:47):
tackle because not only do you have to get to
the root of this, like you have to, you have
to figure out everything else first, you know, and then
then then sort through this lost you have 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

(41:11):
a very pronounced one because the stressful event was so
bad that it wiped out their ability to form memories. Yeah,
that's a good point. That's got to 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

(41:32):
podcast and early shout out. Uh. If you have amnesia
from drinking too much, uh coursaicov syndrome, you should quit
drinking so much and maybe take some B one because
because what is it called thiamine deficiency? Yeah, that's all
it is, is vitamin B. Don't you remember you said that? Um?

(41:55):
I can't remember which episode it was, but we were
talking about hardcore alcoholics degenerate basically physically mentally. Yeah, that's
that yea. 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,

(42:16):
it's sad, especially when you know it's from drinking. You know,
it's a it's like a form of dementia really, yeah,
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,

(42:37):
that's like, that's bad news. 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 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?

(42:59):
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 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. She gets bond and forgets things everything. Yes,

(43:22):
she has like world class amnesia, almost done a Clive
Wearing level. Um. And she wrote this, this memoir and
in it she's 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

(43:43):
what's expected of her and she can kind of guess. Um. Yeah.
She says she has no idea why people celebrate birthdays
or holidays or anything, but she still does it because
she realizes she's expected to. So she's no, it's not
with her. Surely there probably is confabulation. She doesn't believe
what she's imagining. She's faking it, okay, and apparently she's

(44:05):
so good at it that people forget she has amnesia. Right, Um,
but she's saying like, no, I really genuinely don't remember.
I'm just good at making it seem like I do
so I can fit in. I 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,
I'm singing this song. I know I'm supposed to do it,
but I don't know why these people do this. Yeah wow, um,

(44:30):
all right, well let's take another break and then we'll
come back with some more amnesia. Alright, So, Chuck, you

(45:03):
want to talk about amnesia detection, which seems like, oh,
that person can't remember any think 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

(45:23):
that point, and it really spiraled out of control from
there in his case. Uh, sometimes is super obvious. Um,
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 alive,

(45:47):
by the way, is there's intent with a lie. Right,
this person honest intent, Like it doesn't realize they're filling
in the gaps with imagined stuff, or if they do,
they don't want to think about it. There. Yeah, there's
no malice and all. They're just trying to be normal. Uh.
You might have tremors or be uncoordinated. You might be

(46:07):
confused and disoriented, could be in a fugue state, which
is where you're wandering around. Yeah, that's with the disassociative
identity that can be present for sure. You remember when
John McCain entered that fugue state in the two 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

(46:29):
think he pointed his thumb off to this time he
would to a different place state. Uh. One thing you
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,

(46:51):
it could be a sign of mild cognitive impairment. They're
both kinds of dementia, Yeah, which I want to mess
around with that. You can get amnesia from the thos
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

(47:13):
t shirts on like a five k run walk to
fight amnesia? I don't know. Because there's no 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

(47:36):
can do with amnesia. It's bad luck. Is something 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 to yield possibly

(47:57):
results that could be used to treat amnesia. Are UM
are studying fear extinction the opposite. They're trying to induce
s amnisia and PTSD patients, which I think we talked
about this in our PTSD episode. I think so. If
you've ever seen the movie Eternal Sunshine in the Spotless Mind,
that was one of the greatest no And I actually

(48:19):
had people say, how was that not on there? That
was a good movie. 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

(48:40):
are researching that at La Doo Laboratory at n y
U in New York. UH. They did an experiment where
with rats where they would associate a sound with him
being shocked, and they found that in adult rats um
when they heard that sound, of course, they would freeze
up like they were going to get shocked, but in
baby rats they didn't UM. And what they learned was

(49:02):
after about three weeks of age, a sort of a
molecular 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.

(49:23):
And then they basically found that if that sheath has
gone and dissolved, that they could erase fear memories and
the adult rats were not affected any longer by that sound,
the buzzing sound. And they don't know about humans yet,
but they're there. That's obviously why they're studying it. Well,
they there just don't want to learn about rats in
their memory, right, Um, and we we know a pretty

(49:45):
decent amount of human in memory formation, um, thanks to
a specific patient named well. For many many years, until
just a couple of years ago, he was known only
as h. M. Yeah, 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

(50:09):
was the initial memory patient. Yeah. He was had a
bike wreck when he was a kid and was epileptic
from then on. In those siezures to relieve those seizures,
they removed part of his amygdala, I'm sorry, all of
his amigdala and most of his hippocampus and it stopped
the seizures, which is great. But then they found out, hey,

(50:32):
we've got a really good memory patient on our hands now, right,
because he just couldn't remember, and he was also a
very good, easy going guy. Yeah. 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

(50:52):
to people to study UM, and he also his brain,
I should say, proved that memory is not 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,

(51:12):
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 h M were honored,
Like these people should have like statues in front of hospitals,

(51:35):
these people who suffered for the greater good, you know,
as far as research and scientifics yea, or like those
twins that were separated by the New York Um Family
Services for Twins studies. Yeah, yeah, those kids need some
statues or and some move on the box. The girl
in the box. Now the awful the most awful case

(51:56):
ever be a Skinner's kid was that the one that
they they sasically tortured as a child, oh, very recently,
like she was recently discovered. I think it was 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,

(52:16):
it's total abuse. Now, there was some I know we've
talked about it before, some boy who was purposefully sort
of abused for the purposes of research. Oh are you
talking about? And like they didn't have his real name
and know who it was. And for me, little Albert,
little Albert, where they they studied fear extinction in him
by making him scared of things. Yeah, yeah, he definitely

(52:37):
observes a statue. See you remember that and I didn't.
So let's um, you 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

(52:57):
quick man, good movies, Memento. You mentioned internal sunshine, this
potherus mine what else? Um? One of my favorites is
Maholland Drive. I don't remember amnesia 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

(53:18):
didn't like him, not I didn't like it. There was
original open my eyes. I think it was the original
Spanish language film that was based on It was really good.
At what else I don't know, I don't Oh, well,
Jason Bourne, Yeah he had amnesia. Yeah. Um, fifty first Dates.
That was a cute one about amnesia. It's a cute movie.
I didn't see it. And if you I used to

(53:40):
see it, okay. Um, And if you reverse your perspective
a little bit groundhog Day where Bill Murray has a
tremendously excellent memory and everyone else has amnesia. Yea. And
I think this is a great time to acknowledge the great,
great Harold Ramos of on hog Day and Stripes and

(54:01):
Animal House and Caddyshack and Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters. Yeah, what
a loss. He defined comedy for our generation. He died
at sixty nine, which is so young, so young, and
check there's no way we could do an amnesia episode
without mentioning Benjamin Kyle. You remember him. He was found
in two thousand four in a dumpster, naked and unconscious

(54:22):
in Richmond Hill, Georgia, and he came. We've talked about
him before and like one of those one minute bs
things um and he cannot remember anything. He has complete autobiographical,
episodic amnesia, retrograde amnesia, and nothing is helping. They've put
him on MPR, they put him on CNN, they put

(54:44):
him on ABC, they put him on News Channel. 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,

(55:07):
he has totally given himself over the 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

(55:28):
out about him or that might be 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,

(55:48):
so they called him b K because 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

(56:11):
get out of his war crimes for a period. 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,

(56:31):
No way, he was a brown shirt. I got it
wrong again. Brown shirts with the German black shirts were Italian. Okay,
all right, Uh, well that's amnisia. You got anything else,
sir 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.

(56:55):
This is from a termite expert. He was a pest
control operator for seven and a half years and on
the board of the New York State Pest Management Association.
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.

(57:18):
What really happens is that termidicide is injected to form
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 stated,
it might leach into the soil. This makes for good

(57:40):
radio or podcasting, but again it's an alarm to the homeowner. Uh,
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

(58:00):
is a but that's about it and simple to understand. H.
The idea is hopefully they will realize something is wrong
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

(58:21):
of Men, that's a good movie. This program was the
only one at the time that would eliminate a colony.
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 of Pittsburg, a termite expert
who likes to pick knits. Hey, thanks Sean, Right, yeah, uh,
we appreciate that. Actually, I'm just teasing. Uh. If you

(58:46):
want to tell us something we misstated, slightly or otherwise,
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