Anterograde Amnesia – The Dread Has Its Mysteries
July 23, 2009
Anterograde amnesia can be defined to be the inability of creating memories of any events which happened after the event that resulted in the amnesiac state.
This is a situation wherein all the remembrances that were constructed following the incident are gone. At times a patient can get a sour dose of both Anterograde as well as Retrograde Amnesia –which is the opposite of the former, resulting in erasing of any memories that were their before the accident causing the state occurred.
Anterograde Amnesia is still a mystery of an ailment yet to be unfold due to the fact that the exact mechanism in which memory is created and stored is yet least understood. The scientists and researchers have only been successful in finding which are the regions of our brain are responsible and has an involvement in the mechanism of memory creation and storage.
What causes Anterograde Amnesia?
There are generally two reasons of occurrence of this disease. It happens either due to a traumatic injury of the brain which in general results in damaging the hippocampus, or the cortices in the surrounding areas or it can happen as well as a resultant of drug induction, such as benzodiazepines, as well as nimetazepam which are known for their dominant amnesiac side effects.
Anterograde amnesia is common among such patients who have surgically removed a portion of their brain to avoid or fight a more serious disorder. The surgeries normally include amputation of the “memory circuit” –known as “medial temporal lobe”.
For example patients having seizures in this area gets both the sides of the structures eliminated. Even patients having tumor of the brain undergoing surgery often sustains injury of the hippocampus, or the surrounding parts of cortices followed by amnesiac syndromes.
Alcoholics as well have an inclination to get amnesiac, the type is Anterograde amnesia. This situation is generally followed by the rise of BAC level above twenty five percent accompanied by hangover in most cases.
A look into the pathophysiology of Anterograde Amnesia:
The pathophysiology of the disease varies greatly in the locations on the brain that are damaged, to the level the damage occurred. The regions which come up in the discussions mostly are the “basal forebrain area”, “medial temporal lobe”, and the “fornix”. Beyond the scientific details however, the exact method of how the brain remembers “on a micro-scale” is yet a mystery.
The neurophysiologists are yet confused over the fact that if forgetting is a result of faulty retrieval or faulty encoding. However, a fair amount of research data supports the latter theory to the former.
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