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SYSK Selects: How Amnesia Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Hi friends, it's me Josh, and for this week's s
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Speaker 1: Y s K Select, I've chosen our episode on amnesia.
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Speaker 1: I'm not gonna make any sort of joke here. You
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Speaker 1: can just insert your own instead. I will describe this
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Speaker 1: as a great, thick episode that um is about an
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Speaker 1: astoundingly interesting topic. And it's one of those topics where
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Speaker 1: the movies actually get their depictions of this stuff right,
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Speaker 1: because amnesia is just that bizarre. So sit in, buckle
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Speaker 1: up and listen to this, possibly again, possibly for the
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Speaker 1: first time. Who can remember these things? Sorry? Welcome to
0:38
Speaker 1: Stuff You Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios
0:40
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
0:49
Speaker 1: Josh Clark and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant and Jerry
0:52
Speaker 1: and uh, it's Stuff you Should Know the Rodeo. Yeah. Ironically,
0:58
Speaker 1: I asked if we've done a podcast on memory, and
1:01
Speaker 1: neither one of us could remember. And I'm looking it
1:04
Speaker 1: up on our site and I don't see it anywhere.
1:08
Speaker 1: I gotta feel like it doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't anything.
1:11
Speaker 1: It's tough now with six and thirty forty plus, Yeah,
1:14
Speaker 1: I mean, we'll like delve into a subject, but it's
1:17
Speaker 1: not necessarily what the whole podcast is about. And every
1:20
Speaker 1: once while we come up with one of those stupid
1:23
Speaker 1: non how X works titles, so that just throws it
1:27
Speaker 1: off even further. Right, Like we may have like named
1:30
Speaker 1: it like a a podcast to remember boom boom mnemonic
1:36
Speaker 1: device bitching. Yeah, we totally did one on memory. Wow,
1:40
Speaker 1: good job, thank you. That was real time. I just
1:44
Speaker 1: worked it out all right. Well, we're definitely gonna go
1:47
Speaker 1: over memory some because you can't talk about amnesia without
1:50
Speaker 1: talking about memory, so we'll just you know, reinforce that knowledge.
1:54
Speaker 1: I'm excited about this one. I thought it was pretty good.
1:57
Speaker 1: Amnesia's uh sometimes it's like TV and movies, but not usually,
2:04
Speaker 1: Uh it can be. Yeah, but yeah, that's a very
2:07
Speaker 1: rare case. So rare that, um, whoever has that kind
2:12
Speaker 1: of amnesia gets to be the intro for our podcasts.
2:17
Speaker 1: Who a guy named Clive Wearing? Yeah? Man, this dude, Yeah,
2:22
Speaker 1: I feel sorry for him. Did you see the cover
2:24
Speaker 1: of the book. He has this look at his face
2:27
Speaker 1: like what are you doing? That's because he wakes up
2:30
Speaker 1: again every twenty seconds and goes what just happened? Yeah,
2:34
Speaker 1: there's a poor man named Clive wearing. He's a musician
2:37
Speaker 1: and a musicologist, and he is the He is the
2:41
Speaker 1: man with the world's poorest memory, which means Oliver Sacks
2:46
Speaker 1: sleeps on his couch. Yeah you know, um, and he
2:50
Speaker 1: has a memory that refreshes itself every few seconds. He
2:56
Speaker 1: comes out and goes, who's that guy on my couch? Yeah,
3:00
Speaker 1: and he goes, I'm Oliver Sacks. And he goes, oh, hey, Oliver,
3:03
Speaker 1: tattooed on your forearm. And then he goes, Oliver, what
3:05
Speaker 1: are you doing here? That's how it is. But it
3:08
Speaker 1: refreshes like that. So um, this guy, Uh, there was
3:11
Speaker 1: a New Yorker profile in him. That conger who wrote
3:14
Speaker 1: this article um cites saying that eating an apple is
3:18
Speaker 1: kind of like a magic trick to this guy. Like
3:21
Speaker 1: one second, like he's got the apple in his hand
3:23
Speaker 1: and it's intact, and then he'll look down again and
3:26
Speaker 1: it's just the core. A few seconds later, he has
3:29
Speaker 1: no memory whatsoever of eating the apple. Um, he may
3:33
Speaker 1: not even he probably he doesn't remember getting the apple, right,
3:38
Speaker 1: He just knows there's an apple core in his hand now,
3:41
Speaker 1: so he must have eaten it. Yeah, his uh. And
3:45
Speaker 1: we'll go over this later he has a journaling system
3:47
Speaker 1: because you kind of have to. Um, like in the
3:50
Speaker 1: movie Memento, uh, and it had some excerpts and it
3:54
Speaker 1: was literally like nine o five woke up, feeling refreshed,
3:58
Speaker 1: nine oh eight, completely awake, now feeling really good nine
4:02
Speaker 1: tin I am fully awake at this point. And he
4:05
Speaker 1: scratches through previous entries just to to keep track right
4:09
Speaker 1: on where he is in the day. And then it
4:10
Speaker 1: takes like a really jarring turn. Once in a while,
4:12
Speaker 1: I'll be like n twelve, I no longer trust my wife. Yeah,
4:16
Speaker 1: there's some weird guy on my couch here. She's out
4:19
Speaker 1: to get me. She could really mess with this guy. Yeah,
4:23
Speaker 1: you know, she could be like Joey Pants and Memento. Yeah.
4:26
Speaker 1: I mean, how many times in an argument do I
4:28
Speaker 1: s I don't know what you're talking about. That would
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Speaker 1: be so great if that was actually affecting. I mean,
4:32
Speaker 1: an argument would just stop after a few seconds, would
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Speaker 1: be like, but that would be one of the horrible
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Speaker 1: side effects sure of having m nisa, like Clive wearing
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Speaker 1: has UM. Imagine coming to and you're a genneral and
4:46
Speaker 1: still pumping, and you feel the sensation of anger. You
4:49
Speaker 1: have no idea. Why. Yeah, that that is what happens
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Speaker 1: to this guy. Yeah, so we should say that. Um,
4:56
Speaker 1: he's not just like a a walking noodle like he
5:00
Speaker 1: does have some memories. He has Uh. He has the
5:03
Speaker 1: ability to still play the piano, which is amazing. He
5:07
Speaker 1: was an accomplished piano player. Um, but he can he
5:11
Speaker 1: can play the piano if you ask him to, and
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Speaker 1: he'll play it well. But then when he finishes, you
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Speaker 1: can say, oh, what was that piece? And he will
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Speaker 1: say what peace? And that's that. Yeah. He he has
5:23
Speaker 1: both retrograde and in tarro grade amnesia, which is pretty
5:26
Speaker 1: rare to have both of those at once. Um, and
5:29
Speaker 1: what we'll get to what all that means. But uh,
5:34
Speaker 1: and we'll get to why as well that he can
5:36
Speaker 1: go make a cup of coffee. We're going to get
5:38
Speaker 1: to it. You know, we already have. Oh that's a
5:44
Speaker 1: nice tease. Apparently one of the symptoms that he first
5:47
Speaker 1: exhibited was he couldn't remember his daughter's name, though really
5:51
Speaker 1: one of his earliest symptoms was the headache. And then
5:54
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, he's like, what's your name kid? Right?
5:56
Speaker 1: And then he thought maybe something's not right here. Well,
6:00
Speaker 1: and this is one of the things about amnesia that
6:02
Speaker 1: it's different for everyone, and it's all dependent on uh,
6:06
Speaker 1: what happened to you and the extent of whatever damage
6:09
Speaker 1: you may have suffered. Right, And even two people who
6:11
Speaker 1: have identical types of amnesia, it's going to be different
6:15
Speaker 1: for them. And here's why memory is different for everybody. Exactly,
6:19
Speaker 1: we all four memories following similar um constructs. But for
6:24
Speaker 1: each individual person, what we remember, what makes us remember something, um,
6:30
Speaker 1: all of that is highly individualized, highly personalized, so much
6:34
Speaker 1: so that, Chuck, have you ever wondered if we all
6:38
Speaker 1: see the color green the same? No, you've never wondered. Now,
6:44
Speaker 1: I never wondered that, but now I am, And it's fascinating.
6:47
Speaker 1: You haven't never wondered that? Really? Oh yeah, like if
6:51
Speaker 1: like our visual cues are subjective, well, I mean, like
6:54
Speaker 1: I see green and you see green and it's similar.
6:57
Speaker 1: But haven't you ever wondered if like the shade is
7:01
Speaker 1: slightly different or I never wondered that just because of
7:04
Speaker 1: our the information coming to our optic terms, our eyes
7:06
Speaker 1: are slightly different, Like all of those little nuances, like
7:09
Speaker 1: what's green to me? It's not necessarily green to you,
7:13
Speaker 1: even though it really is because we both say lights green. Yeah,
7:17
Speaker 1: but there if you think about there will be no
7:18
Speaker 1: way to really describe that because if it's all subjective,
7:22
Speaker 1: what do you say? Green is like a combination of
7:24
Speaker 1: these two colors? Like, but what are those two colors? Yeah,
7:26
Speaker 1: it's easier to just point and be like that's green.
7:28
Speaker 1: You go, now that's not green. Yeah, we should do
7:30
Speaker 1: one on color blindness. I have it on the list,
7:32
Speaker 1: but it's, um pretty tough, believe it or not. I did. Uh,
7:37
Speaker 1: don't be dumb on color blindness. Dogs being color blind? Right,
7:41
Speaker 1: they're not. They're not. No, No, they see how to
7:46
Speaker 1: prove that they see a spectrum? I can't remember. You'll
7:50
Speaker 1: have to watch. They don't be dumb on it. Um. Okay,
7:53
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the memory process that humans typically follow,
7:57
Speaker 1: even though it is highly individualized. Yeah, there's a couple
8:00
Speaker 1: of types of memory we all know and love as
8:03
Speaker 1: short term and long term. Um. If you long short
8:09
Speaker 1: term is good because you remember what you want and
8:11
Speaker 1: you get rid of what you don't if you if
8:13
Speaker 1: you didn't, you would be like Mary lou Henterer from Taxi.
8:17
Speaker 1: Oh did she have like an amazing memory? She has
8:20
Speaker 1: a condition that only another dozen people have in the
8:22
Speaker 1: US called h Sam highly superior autobiographical memory. And they
8:28
Speaker 1: just discovered it in two thousand six period, not just
8:31
Speaker 1: in her. And it's only autobiographical, though, but for these people,
8:35
Speaker 1: you say June one, six and Merrily Lou Henner can go, oh, well,
8:42
Speaker 1: that was an off day for taxi. We weren't shooting,
8:45
Speaker 1: and I went shopping at Sacks and bought the scarf
8:47
Speaker 1: and had a cop salad. And uh, like I said,
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Speaker 1: though it's only autobiographical, they can't necessarily remember like everything,
8:55
Speaker 1: just about details of their life. But it's just nuts,
8:58
Speaker 1: Like she literally members everything that's ever happened to her.
9:02
Speaker 1: So that's cool that she remembers that cops salad because
9:06
Speaker 1: it was probably pretty good, pretty tough to screw up
9:09
Speaker 1: the cops salad. Uh, Sacks trip. That's fun. So that's good.
9:14
Speaker 1: But if she were if she had um a low
9:18
Speaker 1: lighting inhibition where all of the things like the click
9:23
Speaker 1: of of UM, a lightbulb turning on, the buzzing from
9:29
Speaker 1: somebody's electric razor next door, the sound of water rushing,
9:33
Speaker 1: the look of everything, the feel of everything, all of
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Speaker 1: that information was coming in and flooding her memory and
9:38
Speaker 1: asking for her attention to crazy. Yeah. So one of
9:42
Speaker 1: the roles of short term memory, specifically the hippocampus, is
9:46
Speaker 1: to say keep that, keep that, throw that away, throw
9:49
Speaker 1: that away, throw that away. This one seems kind of important. Oh,
9:52
Speaker 1: this one has an emotion attached. We definitely need to
9:55
Speaker 1: keep that. That's what's going on with short term memory.
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Speaker 1: Apparently we keep about seven pieces of informa ation up
10:00
Speaker 1: to thirty seconds, which sounds to me like a statement
10:05
Speaker 1: that is going to be utterly debunked as ridiculous in
10:08
Speaker 1: ten years. You understand memory more for the time being.
10:11
Speaker 1: That's our concept of short term memory. It does seem
10:14
Speaker 1: sort of like a stab. Yeah, a stab at something.
10:17
Speaker 1: It's overly concise. Yeah, you know, agreed. So that's short
10:21
Speaker 1: term memory and short term memories basically just holding immediate
10:25
Speaker 1: information in the front of your mind, um figure totively
10:31
Speaker 1: in literally yeah. Uh. And if it's sorted, it's sorted
10:36
Speaker 1: into long term memory. That's right. How we store memories,
10:41
Speaker 1: how we make memories. The first thing that happens is
10:44
Speaker 1: we have something called sensory memories. So you see a uh,
10:49
Speaker 1: you hear josh past gas, and you hear a sound.
10:54
Speaker 1: You might smell something you would not hear that. That's true,
10:57
Speaker 1: you're an sp D guy. Uh. Or Let's say you
11:00
Speaker 1: see a strawberry and you taste the strawberry and you
11:03
Speaker 1: see what it looks like, that it's red, and you
11:04
Speaker 1: taste it and you know it's tart. Those are sensory memories,
11:09
Speaker 1: and our nerve cells detect that. They send that as
11:12
Speaker 1: an electrical electrical impulse along to the end of a
11:16
Speaker 1: nerve um. It turns on the little neurotransmitter, which sends
11:20
Speaker 1: a chemical message that hops. We've talked about synapses, those
11:23
Speaker 1: gaps between nerve cells. The neurotransmitter sends it across that
11:28
Speaker 1: little great divide to the neuron, which is your brain cell,
11:33
Speaker 1: and immediately your brain registers that as a short term memory. Uh.
11:38
Speaker 1: And whether or not it becomes a long term memory
11:40
Speaker 1: is whether or not you need to remember that and
11:43
Speaker 1: encode it. And that encoding process is what moves it
11:46
Speaker 1: to the deep freeze. You know what I'm curious about.
11:49
Speaker 1: I wish I thought to look this up. How does
11:51
Speaker 1: science quantify the present? Like? Can you as the present?
11:56
Speaker 1: You know point eight nanoseconds? Is it the thirty seconds
12:01
Speaker 1: that you're you're working memories, chewing on something. I mean,
12:04
Speaker 1: how quickly does a sensation or an experience become the past?
12:11
Speaker 1: That's nanosecond after it happens, I guess. But why a
12:14
Speaker 1: nano second? Why not a micro second? Why not five seconds?
12:16
Speaker 1: Whatever the smallest amount of time is. Yeah, technically probably,
12:20
Speaker 1: I guess. So that's pretty deep thought though after that, green,
12:25
Speaker 1: it's like I took acid earlier. Sweet? Uh so um.
12:31
Speaker 1: Encoding for long term memories where we were right, All
12:34
Speaker 1: of this stuff is coming to the hippocampus, and the
12:38
Speaker 1: hippocampus works in concert with some other parts of the brain,
12:41
Speaker 1: the amygdala, the thalamus. The amygdala is big on emotion,
12:45
Speaker 1: the thalamus is big on um routing sensory stuff and
12:50
Speaker 1: pairing it with emotion. Emotions play a big role in memory, yes,
12:54
Speaker 1: because if you pair an experience with an emotion, it's
12:58
Speaker 1: going to have that much more of a an impact
13:02
Speaker 1: on our neural pathways that are formed. Yeah, that's what
13:05
Speaker 1: encoding is. Like the things you remember most, you're you're
13:08
Speaker 1: you're basically leaving a trail of bread crumbs along this pathway.
13:12
Speaker 1: If you want to retrieve a memory, and the stronger
13:15
Speaker 1: like you said, if it's tied to emotion, it might
13:16
Speaker 1: be stronger and more reinforced. Or if it's something you
13:19
Speaker 1: have to remember a lot, that bread crumb trail is
13:22
Speaker 1: going to be with larger pieces of bread. Yeah. The
13:25
Speaker 1: more spot, the more times it's traversed, the the more
13:29
Speaker 1: well worn the path grows, the stronger that memory is UM.
13:33
Speaker 1: And that's that's a UM A mechanism called long term
13:37
Speaker 1: potential action where an initial sensory experience becomes a hard
13:43
Speaker 1: encoded memory in our long term memory. And you could
13:46
Speaker 1: crack open like one of our brains and say, see
13:50
Speaker 1: this this neural circuit right here, that's my memory of
13:53
Speaker 1: my last birthday. Yeah. See that doughnut that's just there.
13:58
Speaker 1: It just started growing a few years ago. I'm waiting
14:01
Speaker 1: for it to fully mature before I harvest it. That
14:03
Speaker 1: was always a one of the early Simpsons had that.
14:06
Speaker 1: I think it showed people's like thought bubbles at one point,
14:09
Speaker 1: and Homer's is just a donut. Yeah, that was pretty good.
14:11
Speaker 1: I can see that. Uh So, like you said, this
14:15
Speaker 1: this is all part of the limbic system. I don't
14:17
Speaker 1: think we said that. No, we didn't, which which is uh,
14:20
Speaker 1: you know your reward system, you experience emotions through it. Yeah,
14:24
Speaker 1: learning memory all that is tied to the limbic system
14:27
Speaker 1: and um, are our thoughts are being stored in the
14:32
Speaker 1: cerebral cortex? Are I should say, are episode or is
14:38
Speaker 1: it our episodic well short term that's in this in
14:42
Speaker 1: the cerebral cortex. Yeah, okay, um so if a yeah,
14:46
Speaker 1: that's right. Because if you take a specific type of memory,
14:51
Speaker 1: which we'll get to in a second, it usually gets
14:53
Speaker 1: stored in the region that's responsible for processing it as
14:56
Speaker 1: it happens in the first place. So like Broker's area
15:00
Speaker 1: responsible for processing language, there's also your your language related
15:05
Speaker 1: memories are stored there. Yeah. Yeah, you know the time
15:08
Speaker 1: that guy shouted at you in Spanish you didn't know
15:10
Speaker 1: what he was saying. You can crack open the Broker's
15:13
Speaker 1: area and there it is. Yeah. So the cortex is
15:16
Speaker 1: where you temporarily put it. It works with the hippocampus
15:19
Speaker 1: to send it to like you said, whatever part of
15:21
Speaker 1: the brain. I didn't know that. That's interesting though. It
15:24
Speaker 1: lives where it was originated. Mixed total sense. Yeah again,
15:28
Speaker 1: I really just I have a feeling that are understanding
15:32
Speaker 1: of memory is tenuous enough that like a lot of
15:35
Speaker 1: this stuff is going to change in ten years, five years,
15:38
Speaker 1: fifteen years, but for the time being, this is our understanding. Well,
15:42
Speaker 1: like with anything of the brain, it's just like there's
15:44
Speaker 1: still so much mystery, you know, it's shrouded in it
15:47
Speaker 1: the gray area. Uh. All right, So there's many types
15:50
Speaker 1: of long term memory. Uh. They are as follows, and
15:54
Speaker 1: these will come up throughout the show. Your explicit or
15:57
Speaker 1: episodic memory is what we do we study for a podcast. Basically,
16:01
Speaker 1: it's like facts and information specific stuff. Right, we read it,
16:06
Speaker 1: we learn it, we know it. Yeah, cramming for an exam,
16:09
Speaker 1: that's how you do it. You've got procedural or implicit Uh.
16:13
Speaker 1: These are sensory and motor memories. That's how you know
16:16
Speaker 1: how to make a cup of coffee. And it's it's
16:18
Speaker 1: like muscle memory. Yeah, it becomes less of memory and
16:21
Speaker 1: more something that you've done by repetition over and over.
16:23
Speaker 1: That's why, uh, Clive make that cup of coffee, or
16:28
Speaker 1: can play the piano. Still, Yeah, he does remember how
16:32
Speaker 1: to play the piano. His fingers just do it from
16:35
Speaker 1: muscle memory. Right, he doesn't consciously remember. He does have
16:38
Speaker 1: procedural memories exactly. Um, you've got semantic memory, which is
16:44
Speaker 1: organized and categorized memories. So it's kind of like a
16:48
Speaker 1: meta version of type of memory, right, where like you, um,
16:53
Speaker 1: if you're thinking about what your favorite bands are something, right,
16:57
Speaker 1: you have a file of all the bands you ever
16:59
Speaker 1: listened to that and maybe there's a subfolder in that
17:02
Speaker 1: file of the ones that you've ever heard that you like, right,
17:05
Speaker 1: and all of those are based on your experiences of
17:08
Speaker 1: listening to led Zeppelin or you know, um Boogie Down
17:12
Speaker 1: Productions or the Carpenters. I can go on. So when
17:16
Speaker 1: someone asks you what your favorite band does, you're scrolling
17:19
Speaker 1: through that folder, right, and what you're doing is accessing
17:22
Speaker 1: your semantic memory. Right. Or you could just say Pavement.
17:26
Speaker 1: You could be like, look at the T shirt, but
17:28
Speaker 1: you just default and say Pavement and you're good to go.
17:31
Speaker 1: Pixies for you, probably, huh uh. Yeah. I would say
17:36
Speaker 1: these days, I would go more with Morrissey. Oh yeah, yeah,
17:40
Speaker 1: whoa Oh he's always been up there, yeah, nipping at
17:43
Speaker 1: the Pixies heels. But I would say Morrisey may have
17:45
Speaker 1: taken the lead recently. Yeah, I remember we're hearing the
17:48
Speaker 1: Smiths for the first time in like ninth grade, I
17:52
Speaker 1: was like, man, who are these guys? They still hold up?
17:54
Speaker 1: But if you and if you listen though, it's like, well, no,
17:57
Speaker 1: you mean the Smiths. No, I love the Smiths. But
18:01
Speaker 1: if you listen to Morrissey's career, like all it was
18:05
Speaker 1: was the evolution of Morris. He started with the Smiths
18:08
Speaker 1: and he just kept going and he just hit his
18:11
Speaker 1: stride even more after the Smiths. Morris even more than
18:15
Speaker 1: the Smith's man all right, and it felt good to
18:19
Speaker 1: get off my chest. You won't find me dissing Mars
18:23
Speaker 1: under any circumstances. Why would. He's the man. So you've
18:27
Speaker 1: got emotional long term memory that those are um well
18:30
Speaker 1: emotional like superintense memories about something that may have happened
18:34
Speaker 1: to you. Uh. And then spatial which are just the
18:37
Speaker 1: spacing of an area. I remember that in the dark
18:40
Speaker 1: when I go to the bathroom that I have to
18:41
Speaker 1: walk around my nightstand. Oh yeah, that's the good one,
18:45
Speaker 1: running right into it. Man, that'll break your toe. Although
18:47
Speaker 1: that happens, and I kind of I don't necessarily take
18:51
Speaker 1: issue with emotional memories being broken out as their own thing,
18:54
Speaker 1: but it seems like emotion is one of the drivers
18:58
Speaker 1: of memory formation, even if it's just the slightest feeling.
19:04
Speaker 1: It seems like emotion is attached to all memories, like
19:07
Speaker 1: it's a it's a signal like remember this, and it's
19:10
Speaker 1: also a way it's it's an aspect of memory as well,
19:13
Speaker 1: like when you recall a memory strawberry. Um, if you
19:17
Speaker 1: have your first strawberry after somebody mashes it in your
19:20
Speaker 1: face and like twist your nipples and walks away, right,
19:25
Speaker 1: you're probably going to associate that bad feeling with strawberries
19:30
Speaker 1: for a while. There's nothing worse than strawberry tuffs. So
19:34
Speaker 1: so all all memories have some amount of emotion to him,
19:38
Speaker 1: which means all memories are emotional. But Chuck, that doesn't
19:42
Speaker 1: mean that for the rest of your life you're gonna
19:45
Speaker 1: have kind of a sour taste in your mouth when
19:47
Speaker 1: you're eating a sweet strawberry because of that initial experience,
19:51
Speaker 1: because memories are subject to change because of neural plasticity.
19:56
Speaker 1: That's right, although you may as well like you might
19:59
Speaker 1: remember it, but I'll you don't have the emotional experience
20:02
Speaker 1: of it over and over again. If you eat enough
20:04
Speaker 1: strawberries and experience them in different situations and settings. Right,
20:08
Speaker 1: I guess you're right. Like, if something has made me
20:10
Speaker 1: sick in the past, I have an aversion to it,
20:13
Speaker 1: but I don't power through it, like I just leave
20:15
Speaker 1: it there. I won't drink Milwaukee's Best beer anymore. Really
20:20
Speaker 1: get sick off that man like years ago, and just
20:24
Speaker 1: the smell of it now immediately, I'm just like bo.
20:27
Speaker 1: That's funny, you know, Um, if you wanted to, you
20:31
Speaker 1: could power through it and after enough times, what you
20:34
Speaker 1: would be doing is activating that neural circuit, that long
20:38
Speaker 1: term potential ation and refreshing it a little bit, changing
20:41
Speaker 1: your idea of what Milwaukee's Best is all about. But
20:46
Speaker 1: that's a commercial. They should send us some beer and
20:49
Speaker 1: I'll get over it. You. But I won't get so
20:52
Speaker 1: drunk that I pass out and forget, because we'll get
20:53
Speaker 1: to that. That's a real thing. Yeah, it's a kind
20:55
Speaker 1: of amnesia. It is literally, you can get amnesia tonight
20:58
Speaker 1: if you want things. I'm going to see Stephen Maltamus
21:02
Speaker 1: tonight full circle. You want to remember that? And then
21:06
Speaker 1: the third type of memory is where you combine short
21:10
Speaker 1: term memory with long term memory and you come up
21:12
Speaker 1: with working memory. UM. One example I saw during research
21:16
Speaker 1: is when you're looking at a menu, you're going down
21:20
Speaker 1: a menu to decide what you want to eat. You're
21:22
Speaker 1: taking in that information from that menu, UM, and you're
21:25
Speaker 1: creating a little bit of an episodic stimulus in your
21:30
Speaker 1: short term memory, and then you're accessing your long term memories,
21:34
Speaker 1: maybe from having pork chops before, UM, and you're comparing
21:38
Speaker 1: the two. That's your working memory. So that's a that's
21:42
Speaker 1: a huge aspect of memory as well. And they think,
21:44
Speaker 1: as it stands right now, that it's basically a combination
21:48
Speaker 1: of short term memory and long term memory, mixing them together.
21:52
Speaker 1: And there you have your menu choice and that's just
21:55
Speaker 1: your day to day kind of deciding things. That's what
21:59
Speaker 1: you're working memory is. Yeah, that's a very dumb way
22:02
Speaker 1: to say it, but you know what I mean, your
22:03
Speaker 1: day to day all right. So I guess we can
22:07
Speaker 1: talk about an amnesia a little bit now, right, Yeah, Uh,
22:11
Speaker 1: forgetfulness is good. It's not a bad thing to forget. Um.
22:15
Speaker 1: You should remember the important things. But like we said,
22:17
Speaker 1: it frees up your brain of the the stuff we
22:21
Speaker 1: don't need. And amnesia is nothing more than a really
22:24
Speaker 1: bad case of the forgets brought on by It can
22:29
Speaker 1: be brought on by a lot of things, but a
22:30
Speaker 1: lot of time it's literally an injury to your brain. Yeah.
22:34
Speaker 1: Well that's neurological amnesia. Yeah, which is the first kind
22:38
Speaker 1: that we're talking about here. It can come on from
22:40
Speaker 1: a stroke. Yeah, it can come on from your you're
22:44
Speaker 1: just not having enough oxygen for a little while. Drug Yeah,
22:48
Speaker 1: drugs can bring it on. Drugs can bring in alcohol. Yeah.
22:52
Speaker 1: What else? Uh, any like blunt force trauma, Yeah, electro
22:57
Speaker 1: convulsive therapy. That was another good episode he did. Yeah.
23:01
Speaker 1: In the case of Clyde Wearing, he had a he
23:04
Speaker 1: had her pies encephalitis, a viral infection that can do
23:08
Speaker 1: it. It It destroyed his basically cut the chord of the
23:11
Speaker 1: hippocampus and the cortex. We'll give him that. The analogy.
23:14
Speaker 1: That's a great analogy, the telephone cord. Uh. Yeah. Then
23:20
Speaker 1: this is thanks to Kristen Kongner who wrote this. I
23:21
Speaker 1: don't know if we mentioned that. Um, if your memories
23:26
Speaker 1: a telephone, the hippocampus is the phone chord, and the
23:29
Speaker 1: synapsis that we talked about are the in the cortex.
23:32
Speaker 1: Those are the voicemail messages. So in his case, he
23:36
Speaker 1: had damaged to his cortex, I believe, and the hippocampus, right, Yeah,
23:40
Speaker 1: he has one of the more severe versions of amnesia.
23:44
Speaker 1: So because the phone cord was cut in the hippocampus,
23:47
Speaker 1: that's why he has no ability to form any long
23:49
Speaker 1: term memory because there's just no pathway. And the voice
23:54
Speaker 1: messages are erased essentially because of the damage to the cortex,
23:58
Speaker 1: and there's no way they may be they're still but
24:00
Speaker 1: there's no way for him to access his voicemail account
24:03
Speaker 1: any longer. So he has a really bad case of
24:06
Speaker 1: neurological amnesia and analogy. I had Mr Telephone Man in
24:11
Speaker 1: my head that New Addition song. Oh yeah, yeah, boys,
24:15
Speaker 1: to go listen to it. It worked too, So when
24:19
Speaker 1: you die your baby's number and you get a click
24:20
Speaker 1: every time, Mr Telephone Man, it's a good song. It
24:25
Speaker 1: is a good song. Neitherdition was pretty good. Yeah, and
24:28
Speaker 1: well we gone over Bill Bidevo when I've dropped a
24:34
Speaker 1: couple of references over the years. Yeah that very few
24:36
Speaker 1: people notice. Were you a Bell Bidevo fan? Okay a
24:40
Speaker 1: little bit? I mean, you know, that wasn't really my music,
24:42
Speaker 1: but I'm a new addition man myself. That was a
24:46
Speaker 1: big Bobby Brown guy. So, UM, with this, with neurological amnesia,
24:51
Speaker 1: there is damage to the structure. Um, and it just
24:56
Speaker 1: shuts down the whole system right cuts that chord and
25:00
Speaker 1: um we talked about all of the different ways you
25:02
Speaker 1: can you can get that. Yeah, and it can be,
25:06
Speaker 1: like we said, depending on how severe the injuries are.
25:08
Speaker 1: It's not always completely cut, but it just may be damaged.
25:12
Speaker 1: So you may have either really bad amnesia like c
25:14
Speaker 1: live wearing, or maybe not so bad right and um.
25:16
Speaker 1: Neurological amnesia is very often permanent, but it's also very
25:21
Speaker 1: often stable unless it's associated with the degenerative brain disease.
25:25
Speaker 1: It's usually like after whatever event happened to you, whatever
25:30
Speaker 1: you come to remembering, or maybe after you fully recover, um,
25:35
Speaker 1: after you hit that point where you're like I don't
25:37
Speaker 1: remember anything else or I can't form new memories after
25:40
Speaker 1: X number of minutes or seconds or whatever. Um, it's
25:44
Speaker 1: gonna stay like that. M So, Chuck, we're talking about
26:12
Speaker 1: neurological amnesia. That's one type and uh the other type,
26:17
Speaker 1: and there's different ways to break them out. But the
26:18
Speaker 1: other main type is dissociative amnesia, which is brought on
26:22
Speaker 1: by intense amounts of stress. Yeah, it's um, it can
26:27
Speaker 1: be a trauma. The good news is it's usually temporary
26:31
Speaker 1: and it can associate. Uh, it can come to light
26:34
Speaker 1: in a couple of different ways. UM. Let's say you
26:36
Speaker 1: had some super traumatic event that can either damage your
26:42
Speaker 1: memory as a whole because of massive amounts of corticol
26:48
Speaker 1: from stress. Or it could just be the one event
26:51
Speaker 1: that you blocked out, like a really bad mugging that
26:55
Speaker 1: scared you, or a car accident or something. You might
26:58
Speaker 1: not have any memory just of that. Right. That's actually
27:01
Speaker 1: how they divide um or subdivide dissociative amnesia. There's a
27:06
Speaker 1: global dissociative amnesia, which is autobiographical, which is like who
27:10
Speaker 1: am I? What happened? After witnessing your family be murdered
27:14
Speaker 1: or something horrific like that, you don't remember anything about anything. Um.
27:19
Speaker 1: The other type of situational dissociative amnesia, where you remember yourself,
27:23
Speaker 1: you remember who you are, your address, out, everything except
27:26
Speaker 1: that that murder that you witnessed. Yeah, which can be
27:28
Speaker 1: a good thing. Yeah, it can be get rid of
27:31
Speaker 1: that memory. You know, you could definitely interpret it as
27:34
Speaker 1: like a safeguard by the brain, you know. Um. Either way, though,
27:41
Speaker 1: what's happened is, like you said, cortisol has been released,
27:44
Speaker 1: which has been shown to affect the hippocampus. Uh. And
27:48
Speaker 1: it also affects the brain's plasticity, or its ability to
27:52
Speaker 1: form new memory. So basically, one way to put it,
27:56
Speaker 1: especially with situational dissociative amnesia, is the brain says, this
28:01
Speaker 1: is so stressful, yeah, that I'm overwhelmed with cortisol and
28:04
Speaker 1: I can't form new memories right now. Therefore this never happened. Yeah.
28:08
Speaker 1: You know. One thing that was interesting is hippopotamus is um.
28:12
Speaker 1: I saw this on Animal Planet the other day. They
28:15
Speaker 1: are so stressed out, um, especially sadly little babies that
28:21
Speaker 1: are orphaned because of poaching for rhino horns. Did I say,
28:25
Speaker 1: hippopotamus rhinoceros. Yeah, they they they feel for the rhinoceros,
28:30
Speaker 1: the rhinoceros I was thinking hippocampus, I think, yeah, um,
28:34
Speaker 1: they can die from too much cortisol, from being stressed
28:38
Speaker 1: so sad like a little baby rhino might die because
28:42
Speaker 1: their parents died just from cortisol, Like massive amounts of
28:45
Speaker 1: cortisol we have to update or can you die of
28:47
Speaker 1: a broken heart episode? Then I think we just did. Okay,
28:52
Speaker 1: we can check that off the list. That's right. Okay. Yes,
28:56
Speaker 1: stressed is a killer. You know this? Yeah? Literally, um,
29:00
Speaker 1: and it can cause amnesia and this is not um.
29:04
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people suspect that when it's
29:08
Speaker 1: not neurological, when there's not an organic cause like a
29:12
Speaker 1: brain injury for amnesia, that it's possibly somebody faking or
29:17
Speaker 1: something like that. No. There, there, they are so stressed
29:21
Speaker 1: out that the chemicals, the chemical composition in their brain
29:24
Speaker 1: has prevented new memories from forming. Not plastic anymore. No. Uh.
29:29
Speaker 1: The thing is is that that the associative amnesia is
29:34
Speaker 1: very frequently temporary. Um. There might be something that triggers
29:38
Speaker 1: a memory that leads to a cascade of memories that
29:41
Speaker 1: restores the person's memory fully. Um. You see that in
29:45
Speaker 1: movies too. That's a big popular one for fiction. Yeah,
29:47
Speaker 1: it's crazy that there's like I mean, it's in movies
29:51
Speaker 1: that happens far more frequently, um than in real life.
29:55
Speaker 1: But it's not terribly far off, not because the movie
30:00
Speaker 1: these are really kind of keeping it close to reality.
30:02
Speaker 1: Just that amnesia is like, can be that crazy, right, right, Yeah,
30:06
Speaker 1: you can kind of do anything, and someone's probably had
30:08
Speaker 1: that kind right. So he mentioned weaving um wearing. Clive
30:14
Speaker 1: Wearing has both retrograde and antiro grade, and that is
30:19
Speaker 1: a couple of other ways that that doctors can um categorize.
30:24
Speaker 1: It is by the type of memory he has. Both
30:26
Speaker 1: retro grade means you can't remember the past and a
30:31
Speaker 1: taro grade means you can't make the new memories. And
30:34
Speaker 1: since he has both, he's in big trouble. Uh. Antro
30:38
Speaker 1: grade is a little more like the movie Memento when
30:42
Speaker 1: every thirty or forty seconds you're born anew but even still, Uh,
30:46
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen Memento, just go ahead and fast
30:49
Speaker 1: forward through this part. Yeah. Um, but he he wrongly
30:54
Speaker 1: remembers his own past. Yeah, which is a symptom of
30:58
Speaker 1: um retrograde amnesia that you can fabulate. You basically come
31:05
Speaker 1: up with imaginary things your mind us to fill in
31:07
Speaker 1: the gaps, and you believe them to be real, but
31:11
Speaker 1: they're not real. It's imagined. Remember that's how he turned
31:14
Speaker 1: out at the end. Like he wasn't the insurance adjuster.
31:17
Speaker 1: That wasn't a case like that was his life. Yeah.
31:21
Speaker 1: And uh also very especially in that movie, very easily
31:24
Speaker 1: to be taken advantage of the one scene with this
31:28
Speaker 1: when he was paying rent, when he kept paying rent,
31:30
Speaker 1: like I was like, hey, your rents do and yeah,
31:34
Speaker 1: I think I was a jerk, But he has a system.
31:36
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that coming up to So let's let's
31:39
Speaker 1: talk about in taro grade. And taro grade is the
31:42
Speaker 1: inability to form new memories. Uh, And it's pretty simple. Basically,
31:48
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with the hippocampus right then. Could be permanent,
31:51
Speaker 1: in which case you end up like Clive Wearing and
31:54
Speaker 1: you can't form new memories, or it could be temporary,
31:57
Speaker 1: could be drunk. That is why uh and tarograde amnesia
32:02
Speaker 1: is far more common than retrograde. It's one reason we
32:05
Speaker 1: can easily assault our hippocampus through booze. Yeah. And as
32:11
Speaker 1: an example of how procedural memory still stays intact, you
32:15
Speaker 1: can walk and talk and move around and everything, and
32:18
Speaker 1: then wake up the next morning be like how did
32:20
Speaker 1: I get here? And no matter how hard you try,
32:23
Speaker 1: you're not going to remember specific details if you fully
32:27
Speaker 1: blacked out, because when you were fully blacked out, your
32:29
Speaker 1: hippocampus was no longer taking all this information and forming
32:32
Speaker 1: memories like they just don't exist. And that's saying tarograde amnesia.
32:38
Speaker 1: And it depends on who you are. Some people like
32:40
Speaker 1: might have an alcohol blackout way easier than others. But
32:43
Speaker 1: if you're blacking out from alcohol, you're drinking too much,
32:47
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, even if you're someone with a super
32:49
Speaker 1: low tolerance and blacks out really easily. Yeah, blacking out,
32:52
Speaker 1: it's blacking out. It's a line for everyone. That doesn't
32:55
Speaker 1: mean you're passing out. You're still doing stuff right and
32:58
Speaker 1: saying stuff you're blacked out, you're blacked out. But um,
33:01
Speaker 1: it can be kind of tricky because if you think
33:03
Speaker 1: about it, you wake up the next morning and you're like,
33:06
Speaker 1: how did I get here? What happened? And by that time,
33:09
Speaker 1: last night was the past, which makes you think, oh,
33:12
Speaker 1: that's retrograde amnesia. Know that amnesia is related to your
33:17
Speaker 1: ability to form memories or access old memories. So with
33:20
Speaker 1: antaro grade, your ability to form new memories in the present,
33:24
Speaker 1: which was while you were drunk and blacked out, right,
33:26
Speaker 1: that was antaro grade amnesia. That's right. Retrograde amnesia is
33:30
Speaker 1: totally different because it is the destruction of those voicemail
33:34
Speaker 1: messages of your past, yes, which is super sad um. Yeah,
33:37
Speaker 1: because what's life of It's not a collection of memories
33:40
Speaker 1: you know and hope for the future. Look at you
33:44
Speaker 1: and this micro second right now. Uh. With retrograde, it's
33:48
Speaker 1: um if it's severe, basically your new memory or your
33:52
Speaker 1: most recent memories which aren't as strong and reinforced yet,
33:55
Speaker 1: are the ones to go first. And then depending on
33:58
Speaker 1: how severe your retrograde at amnesia as it'll go further
34:01
Speaker 1: and further back in your little memory file and start
34:04
Speaker 1: destroying them. Or if you're the case of wearing, if
34:08
Speaker 1: you have a super bad you might not remember your
34:10
Speaker 1: past at all, right, but you just remember his wife.
34:14
Speaker 1: He does remember his wife. And that theory um or
34:17
Speaker 1: that it's called is that Ribot's law, r I bot
34:21
Speaker 1: I would say, Ribo rebo. It looks pretty French. It
34:23
Speaker 1: does look French. Uh. That is that that pattern of
34:27
Speaker 1: destroying those newer memories first and then going back and
34:30
Speaker 1: back depending on how severe it is. And there's a
34:32
Speaker 1: there's a reasoning to it behind the whole thing. It's
34:35
Speaker 1: that you're your more recent memories haven't had years to
34:40
Speaker 1: potentiate and become these well worn paths, so they're easier
34:44
Speaker 1: to wipe out than your longer term ones. But it's
34:48
Speaker 1: totally different retrograde amnesia because it it can attack those
34:53
Speaker 1: parts of your brain where um those memories are stored,
34:58
Speaker 1: So it might not have anything to do with any
35:01
Speaker 1: kind of damage to your hippocampus. It can say, attack
35:05
Speaker 1: the part of your brain where um again, the language
35:09
Speaker 1: memories are stored in your broker's area. Yeah, like if
35:12
Speaker 1: you have a stroke, you might not remember how to speak,
35:16
Speaker 1: and that means that broke his area has been damaged
35:19
Speaker 1: via lack of blood flow and oxygen. That might be different.
35:22
Speaker 1: That might be like your you lose your ability to speak.
35:25
Speaker 1: I wonder if it does have to do with memory, though,
35:28
Speaker 1: now that you mention it, I don't know, huh. Like
35:31
Speaker 1: when my grandfather had a stroke, he still talked, but
35:33
Speaker 1: they weren't words, but he thought he was talking, like
35:37
Speaker 1: in his head he was saying, now you turn left
35:40
Speaker 1: up here to go to the gas station to his wife,
35:42
Speaker 1: but it came out as walking walking duke and walking
35:44
Speaker 1: by super bark and walking all. But that was unsettling.
35:47
Speaker 1: It was sad and unsettling. How how long did he
35:50
Speaker 1: looks like the frustration too? Because in his head he
35:52
Speaker 1: was saying the right words, But could he hear himself
35:55
Speaker 1: like what was coming out of his I don't know,
35:57
Speaker 1: because he couldn't tell us or he could see on
35:59
Speaker 1: your faces that he wasn't saying what he was saying.
36:02
Speaker 1: I don't. I mean I was pretty young, so this
36:04
Speaker 1: is all kind of distant. But how long did he
36:06
Speaker 1: live like that? Um? I feel like a few years? Yeah? Yeah?
36:10
Speaker 1: Did he could? He? Right? I don't remember that. Usually
36:13
Speaker 1: that's separate. Oh yeah, so buddy could write still you
36:16
Speaker 1: should find out. I'm curious. Yeah, I should ask my mom?
36:19
Speaker 1: Was he a good guy? I used the best? Yeah? Well,
36:22
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Chuck. That's right. It happens. It's in my
36:24
Speaker 1: bloodline too, so I'm sure the same thing will happen
36:26
Speaker 1: to me. Is it really? Well, I will prop you
36:28
Speaker 1: up in front of the microphone and we'll do a
36:30
Speaker 1: podcast like that and you'll just translate for me. Yeah,
36:33
Speaker 1: that's very enough to be like I think he's saying
36:35
Speaker 1: he likes paved me. Uh, you could just default to
36:39
Speaker 1: that and not always be sort of happy, and that's fine.
36:42
Speaker 1: I was really saying I was hungry, but you go welcome. Yeah.
36:46
Speaker 1: Um it was weird though, Like his language was very consistent.
36:49
Speaker 1: It had that saying the familiar, like there's a lot
36:52
Speaker 1: of walking walking like that sound like he made up
36:55
Speaker 1: his own language sort of. It's really interesting. That's interesting.
36:59
Speaker 1: And the thing is that's how they figured out that
37:01
Speaker 1: different parts of the brain are responsible for different Um,
37:07
Speaker 1: I guess different aspects of our personality your life, Like
37:10
Speaker 1: speaking is different than hearing yeah and writing right. And
37:14
Speaker 1: it's like if you're just because you can't talk or
37:17
Speaker 1: form words, doesn't mean you can't hear and understand words
37:19
Speaker 1: or write words right, or think in your head the
37:23
Speaker 1: right words, even whether they're not coming out right. Uh So,
37:27
Speaker 1: with both of these kinds of amnesia, uh, we should
37:30
Speaker 1: point out that your explicit or episodic memory is what
37:35
Speaker 1: you're losing, but you're implicit or procedural memory is usually
37:38
Speaker 1: still intact as long as you're cerebellum is good. That's
37:41
Speaker 1: why you might be able to make the cup of
37:42
Speaker 1: coffee or ride a bike, these things that are just
37:46
Speaker 1: ingrained in your in your brain right, And that's why
37:48
Speaker 1: clid Waring can play the piano, but he can't remember
37:51
Speaker 1: who his favorite composer is now, So wearing is a
37:55
Speaker 1: really good example of how somebody can live with amnesia.
37:59
Speaker 1: Number One, he has an amazing caretaker, his wife, who
38:03
Speaker 1: you know, basically she takes care of him. Yeah. I
38:06
Speaker 1: bet she does little things though, like just where she
38:08
Speaker 1: wants to eat that night, right, Like, no, we ate
38:10
Speaker 1: there last night, I'm not going there again, Right, He's
38:12
Speaker 1: like we did. Or she can really get him going
38:14
Speaker 1: where every time he looks at he's like her, she's
38:17
Speaker 1: kiss right, she's kissed, you know, just to just to
38:22
Speaker 1: delight him a little bit. It would be fun to
38:24
Speaker 1: do that, Yeah, exactly. Um. But yes, he has a
38:27
Speaker 1: good caretaker, which is important. Yes, because there's no treatment
38:32
Speaker 1: for amnesia. There's no right. They can't inject you with
38:36
Speaker 1: something all of a sudden your memories come back. So most, um,
38:41
Speaker 1: most treatments for amnesia deal with figuring out how to
38:45
Speaker 1: navigate life under this the new change to the way
38:49
Speaker 1: you remember things. Yeah, it's all about systems. You have
38:52
Speaker 1: to have a system in place that you don't deviate from. Um.
38:56
Speaker 1: In Clive's case and the case of a minto, he's
38:58
Speaker 1: tattoos and polaroids, yeah, and notes for himself, Yeah, sticky notes.
39:02
Speaker 1: And that's what weiring does. Basically keeps a journal and
39:05
Speaker 1: like I said, he crosses things out as he goes,
39:07
Speaker 1: so he knows where he is in the day. Right.
39:11
Speaker 1: He also can look at his journal and says, now,
39:13
Speaker 1: I woke up three times already. I don't need to
39:15
Speaker 1: stop writing that. Um He Also the other aspect of
39:20
Speaker 1: UM forming routines is that they involve habits, and the
39:25
Speaker 1: habits remember your procedural memory still intact, so you end
39:30
Speaker 1: up like just knowing. How does he know to get
39:33
Speaker 1: up and go to the journal if his memory refreshes
39:35
Speaker 1: every few minutes, for every few seconds, it's because he's
39:38
Speaker 1: formed a habit, a procedural memory of there's a journal
39:42
Speaker 1: and you should go to it. So he knows what
39:44
Speaker 1: we would call instinctively um through his procedural memory of
39:47
Speaker 1: using the journal over and over again. He's formed a habit.
39:50
Speaker 1: So that helps big time. Also, smartphones help big time too,
39:55
Speaker 1: because he can access all sorts of stuff, set reminders.
39:58
Speaker 1: He's got a calendar right there, basically what most of
40:01
Speaker 1: us do, except taken to the nth degree. You know,
40:05
Speaker 1: like I rely I have a terrible memory, you know this,
40:07
Speaker 1: So I rely heavily on calendars and notes and reminders. Um,
40:12
Speaker 1: and I don't even have amnesia as far as I know.
40:14
Speaker 1: Can't you imagine like every time he pulls his iPhone out,
40:16
Speaker 1: he's like, wow, right, look at this thing. You know,
40:20
Speaker 1: it's reminding me and it's a computer in my hand. Yeah,
40:23
Speaker 1: the future is here. His wife is so sick of
40:26
Speaker 1: hearing him say the future is here. We really pooked
40:31
Speaker 1: fund of this guy a lot. Yeah. I hope he's
40:33
Speaker 1: not listening to this so he won't remember anyway. Oh,
40:37
Speaker 1: there it was. Uh. Psychotherapy, if you have dissociative amnesia,
40:44
Speaker 1: can help out. I imagine that's a tough case to
40:47
Speaker 1: tackle because not only do you have to get to
40:49
Speaker 1: the root of this, like you have to, you have
40:53
Speaker 1: to figure out everything else first, you know, and then
40:57
Speaker 1: then then sort through this lost you have regenerate the
41:01
Speaker 1: bio autobiographical information and then figure out which part of
41:04
Speaker 1: it is the real problem. So it's like this huge,
41:07
Speaker 1: massive layer on top of a normal case that's already
41:11
Speaker 1: a very pronounced one because the stressful event was so
41:15
Speaker 1: bad that it wiped out their ability to form memories. Yeah,
41:18
Speaker 1: that's a good point. That's got to be. I'm sure
41:21
Speaker 1: not every psychiatrist can handle that. I would say you'd
41:23
Speaker 1: go to a specialist or something like that, an amnesia specialist.
41:26
Speaker 1: Uh do you think there are those? Sure? Well, I'd
41:29
Speaker 1: like to hear from you if you listen to the
41:32
Speaker 1: podcast and early shout out. Uh. If you have amnesia
41:36
Speaker 1: from drinking too much, uh coursaicov syndrome, you should quit
41:40
Speaker 1: drinking so much and maybe take some B one because
41:44
Speaker 1: because what is it called thiamine deficiency? Yeah, that's all
41:48
Speaker 1: it is, is vitamin B. Don't you remember you said that? Um?
41:55
Speaker 1: I can't remember which episode it was, but we were
41:57
Speaker 1: talking about hardcore alcoholics degenerate basically physically mentally. Yeah, that's
42:04
Speaker 1: that yea. And part of it is a thiamine deficiency
42:07
Speaker 1: which leads to amnesia, which can be treated by laying
42:10
Speaker 1: off the sauce and taking B one. It's so sad.
42:12
Speaker 1: Have you ever known someone that was truly like pickled themselves? No,
42:16
Speaker 1: it's sad, especially when you know it's from drinking. You know,
42:21
Speaker 1: it's a it's like a form of dementia really, yeah,
42:25
Speaker 1: from booze and I like to drink. You know, I'm
42:31
Speaker 1: not like poopling the whole thing, but like when you're
42:33
Speaker 1: blacking out and forgetting things and getting the d t s, yeah,
42:37
Speaker 1: that's like, that's bad news. I know that's obvious, but
42:40
Speaker 1: we should point that out because we have kids that
42:42
Speaker 1: listen to this. It's true, you know, all right, So
42:44
Speaker 1: Chuck habits Oh, I wrote another one. I wrote a
42:49
Speaker 1: review of a woman who who wrote a memoir and
42:54
Speaker 1: she had amnesia, huge, big time amnesia. Was it short? Um? No?
42:59
Speaker 1: But her the first line is something like everything you're
43:01
Speaker 1: about to read, I don't remember. It was told to me.
43:05
Speaker 1: She was playing with her kid, and the kid she
43:08
Speaker 1: was spinning him around, and I guess he knocked the
43:10
Speaker 1: ceiling fan loose and it was like poorly installed, and
43:13
Speaker 1: it came down on her head and it was like
43:16
Speaker 1: Gilligan's Island level amnesia. She gets bond and forgets things everything. Yes,
43:22
Speaker 1: she has like world class amnesia, almost done a Clive
43:26
Speaker 1: Wearing level. Um. And she wrote this, this memoir and
43:31
Speaker 1: in it she's basically saying like how she navigates through
43:34
Speaker 1: life with amnesia and a lot of it is just
43:37
Speaker 1: faking it. Yeah, she didn't lose her ability to pick
43:40
Speaker 1: up on social cues, so she can pick up on
43:43
Speaker 1: what's expected of her and she can kind of guess. Um. Yeah.
43:48
Speaker 1: She says she has no idea why people celebrate birthdays
43:52
Speaker 1: or holidays or anything, but she still does it because
43:54
Speaker 1: she realizes she's expected to. So she's no, it's not
43:57
Speaker 1: with her. Surely there probably is confabulation. She doesn't believe
44:01
Speaker 1: what she's imagining. She's faking it, okay, and apparently she's
44:05
Speaker 1: so good at it that people forget she has amnesia. Right, Um,
44:08
Speaker 1: but she's saying like, no, I really genuinely don't remember.
44:12
Speaker 1: I'm just good at making it seem like I do
44:14
Speaker 1: so I can fit in. I must be so weird
44:17
Speaker 1: and frustrating. It sounds pretty weird, like if to have
44:19
Speaker 1: to sing Happy Birthday at a birthday party and she's like,
44:23
Speaker 1: I'm singing this song. I know I'm supposed to do it,
44:25
Speaker 1: but I don't know why these people do this. Yeah wow, um,
44:30
Speaker 1: all right, well let's take another break and then we'll
44:33
Speaker 1: come back with some more amnesia. Alright, So, Chuck, you
45:03
Speaker 1: want to talk about amnesia detection, which seems like, oh,
45:07
Speaker 1: that person can't remember any think they have amnesia or
45:10
Speaker 1: they just got hit on the head with a coconut right,
45:13
Speaker 1: well for wearing. Uh, he had a headache. That was
45:16
Speaker 1: the first thing that happened. The next thing that happened
45:18
Speaker 1: a couple of days later, Like you said earlier, he
45:20
Speaker 1: could remember his daughter's name, So warning signs flashing at
45:23
Speaker 1: that point, and it really spiraled out of control from
45:27
Speaker 1: there in his case. Uh, sometimes is super obvious. Um,
45:32
Speaker 1: Like you said, if you injure your head and you
45:34
Speaker 1: can't remember things, then you've got some form of amnesia. Um.
45:38
Speaker 1: Can you recall your past events? Uh? Do you confabulate?
45:43
Speaker 1: Do you confabulate? And the difference between a confabulation alive,
45:47
Speaker 1: by the way, is there's intent with a lie. Right,
45:50
Speaker 1: this person honest intent, Like it doesn't realize they're filling
45:54
Speaker 1: in the gaps with imagined stuff, or if they do,
45:57
Speaker 1: they don't want to think about it. There. Yeah, there's
45:59
Speaker 1: no malice and all. They're just trying to be normal. Uh.
46:03
Speaker 1: You might have tremors or be uncoordinated. You might be
46:07
Speaker 1: confused and disoriented, could be in a fugue state, which
46:10
Speaker 1: is where you're wandering around. Yeah, that's with the disassociative
46:14
Speaker 1: identity that can be present for sure. You remember when
46:17
Speaker 1: John McCain entered that fugue state in the two eight
46:19
Speaker 1: debate against Obama. Did you see that? Yeah? Man, I
46:24
Speaker 1: couldn't believe it. Even Obama was like, what is this
46:26
Speaker 1: guy doing? He even he made that face and I
46:29
Speaker 1: think he pointed his thumb off to this time he
46:30
Speaker 1: would to a different place state. Uh. One thing you
46:35
Speaker 1: want to do is get a cat scan or an
46:36
Speaker 1: m r I or both and see a doctor immediately,
46:40
Speaker 1: you know, and find out what the heck is going on. Yeah, Like,
46:43
Speaker 1: don't don't If you can't remember things that you usually can,
46:47
Speaker 1: don't mess around. It could be a sign of early Alzheimer's. UM,
46:51
Speaker 1: it could be a sign of mild cognitive impairment. They're
46:55
Speaker 1: both kinds of dementia, Yeah, which I want to mess
46:57
Speaker 1: around with that. You can get amnesia from the thos
47:00
Speaker 1: or it can be a symptom of dementia, but UM,
47:03
Speaker 1: dementia and amnesia are not one and the same. Um. So, Chuck,
47:08
Speaker 1: why don't you see people wearing like, uh prevent amnesia
47:13
Speaker 1: t shirts on like a five k run walk to
47:15
Speaker 1: fight amnesia? I don't know. Because there's no way to
47:19
Speaker 1: prevent it, aside from maybe wearing a helmet when you're
47:21
Speaker 1: riding a bike, avoiding trees with loose coconuts, UM, doing
47:26
Speaker 1: what you can to prevent a stroke or cut down
47:29
Speaker 1: on your risk of stroke uh, and steering clear of
47:32
Speaker 1: highly stressful events. Apparently, there's really not a lot you
47:36
Speaker 1: can do with amnesia. It's bad luck. Is something pretty
47:40
Speaker 1: much something that happens to you that causes it, that's right, UM.
47:43
Speaker 1: But again, there are possible they're working on some treatments.
47:48
Speaker 1: There's no pill now, but they're working on treatments in
47:51
Speaker 1: the the cutting edge field that's starting to yield possibly
47:57
Speaker 1: results that could be used to treat amnesia. Are UM
48:01
Speaker 1: are studying fear extinction the opposite. They're trying to induce
48:05
Speaker 1: s amnisia and PTSD patients, which I think we talked
48:09
Speaker 1: about this in our PTSD episode. I think so. If
48:12
Speaker 1: you've ever seen the movie Eternal Sunshine in the Spotless Mind,
48:15
Speaker 1: that was one of the greatest no And I actually
48:19
Speaker 1: had people say, how was that not on there? That
48:21
Speaker 1: was a good movie. It was a good movie. We'll
48:23
Speaker 1: call it one on one, okay, UM. And in that movie, Uh,
48:28
Speaker 1: people would pay money to have certain in the in
48:31
Speaker 1: the case of the movie, certain people remove from their mind,
48:34
Speaker 1: like a former girlfriend that was so painful you just
48:37
Speaker 1: wanted no trace over in your memory. Um. But they
48:40
Speaker 1: are researching that at La Doo Laboratory at n y
48:43
Speaker 1: U in New York. UH. They did an experiment where
48:48
Speaker 1: with rats where they would associate a sound with him
48:51
Speaker 1: being shocked, and they found that in adult rats um
48:55
Speaker 1: when they heard that sound, of course, they would freeze
48:57
Speaker 1: up like they were going to get shocked, but in
48:59
Speaker 1: baby rats they didn't UM. And what they learned was
49:02
Speaker 1: after about three weeks of age, a sort of a
49:07
Speaker 1: molecular sheath would form around the cells in the amygdala.
49:11
Speaker 1: So they found a drug that would dissolve that sheath
49:16
Speaker 1: and basically leave it prone to UH manipulation replasticization. Yeah.
49:23
Speaker 1: And then they basically found that if that sheath has
49:25
Speaker 1: gone and dissolved, that they could erase fear memories and
49:28
Speaker 1: the adult rats were not affected any longer by that sound,
49:32
Speaker 1: the buzzing sound. And they don't know about humans yet,
49:36
Speaker 1: but they're there. That's obviously why they're studying it. Well,
49:39
Speaker 1: they there just don't want to learn about rats in
49:41
Speaker 1: their memory, right, Um, and we we know a pretty
49:45
Speaker 1: decent amount of human in memory formation, um, thanks to
49:49
Speaker 1: a specific patient named well. For many many years, until
49:53
Speaker 1: just a couple of years ago, he was known only
49:55
Speaker 1: as h. M. Yeah, and he was a man who
49:58
Speaker 1: now that he's died, his identity has been revealed as
50:01
Speaker 1: Henry Mollison. Yeah. He was a lot like Clive Wearing.
50:04
Speaker 1: His memory didn't refresh quite as frequently. But um, he
50:09
Speaker 1: was the initial memory patient. Yeah. He was had a
50:14
Speaker 1: bike wreck when he was a kid and was epileptic
50:17
Speaker 1: from then on. In those siezures to relieve those seizures,
50:20
Speaker 1: they removed part of his amygdala, I'm sorry, all of
50:25
Speaker 1: his amigdala and most of his hippocampus and it stopped
50:28
Speaker 1: the seizures, which is great. But then they found out, hey,
50:32
Speaker 1: we've got a really good memory patient on our hands now, right,
50:34
Speaker 1: because he just couldn't remember, and he was also a
50:38
Speaker 1: very good, easy going guy. Yeah. They studied him for life, Yes,
50:41
Speaker 1: from like nineteen fifty three on, I think in nineteen
50:44
Speaker 1: fifty five on. Yeah, and by on we mean to
50:47
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. He just died semi recently and
50:50
Speaker 1: they're still slicing his brain apart and sending it out
50:52
Speaker 1: to people to study UM, and he also his brain,
50:56
Speaker 1: I should say, proved that memory is not long circuit.
51:01
Speaker 1: The processes in one long circuit, where like with a
51:03
Speaker 1: string of Christmas lightbulbs, if one bowl burns out, the
51:06
Speaker 1: whole thing does. Because he could remember stuff from his
51:09
Speaker 1: past up to the time when he got the surgery,
51:12
Speaker 1: he just couldn't form new memories. So they figured out
51:15
Speaker 1: that UM long term memory storage and retrieval was distinct
51:20
Speaker 1: from new memory formation, which, as we've seen you and
51:23
Speaker 1: I explained fully. Yeah, they should do. I wish more
51:27
Speaker 1: people like Henrietta Axe and and h M were honored,
51:32
Speaker 1: Like these people should have like statues in front of hospitals,
51:35
Speaker 1: these people who suffered for the greater good, you know,
51:39
Speaker 1: as far as research and scientifics yea, or like those
51:42
Speaker 1: twins that were separated by the New York Um Family
51:46
Speaker 1: Services for Twins studies. Yeah, yeah, those kids need some
51:49
Speaker 1: statues or and some move on the box. The girl
51:53
Speaker 1: in the box. Now the awful the most awful case
51:56
Speaker 1: ever be a Skinner's kid was that the one that
51:59
Speaker 1: they they sasically tortured as a child, oh, very recently,
52:03
Speaker 1: like she was recently discovered. I think it was a boy.
52:07
Speaker 1: I heard about a girl who was kept in a
52:08
Speaker 1: closet for her whole life and then in Texas and
52:12
Speaker 1: I remember that too, Yeah, but not to study as abuse, right, yes,
52:16
Speaker 1: it's total abuse. Now, there was some I know we've
52:19
Speaker 1: talked about it before, some boy who was purposefully sort
52:22
Speaker 1: of abused for the purposes of research. Oh are you
52:25
Speaker 1: talking about? And like they didn't have his real name
52:27
Speaker 1: and know who it was. And for me, little Albert,
52:30
Speaker 1: little Albert, where they they studied fear extinction in him
52:34
Speaker 1: by making him scared of things. Yeah, yeah, he definitely
52:37
Speaker 1: observes a statue. See you remember that and I didn't.
52:39
Speaker 1: So let's um, you said something that that they couldn't
52:43
Speaker 1: remember his name I think is what triggered it. Yeah,
52:45
Speaker 1: so uh and that is uh, that's part of encoding.
52:49
Speaker 1: I encoded it. It's right with the idea little Albert.
52:52
Speaker 1: They didn't remember his original name. Your trail of bread
52:55
Speaker 1: crumbs is more solid. So let's talk pop culture real
52:57
Speaker 1: quick man, good movies, Memento. You mentioned internal sunshine, this
53:01
Speaker 1: potherus mine what else? Um? One of my favorites is
53:04
Speaker 1: Maholland Drive. I don't remember amnesia of being a part
53:07
Speaker 1: of that, but yeah, the the one girl couldn't remember anything,
53:10
Speaker 1: is it the main character? Yeah, the burnette Vanilla Sky. Yeah.
53:15
Speaker 1: I did not care for with it. I know everybody
53:18
Speaker 1: didn't like him, not I didn't like it. There was
53:20
Speaker 1: original open my eyes. I think it was the original
53:23
Speaker 1: Spanish language film that was based on It was really good.
53:26
Speaker 1: At what else I don't know, I don't Oh, well,
53:30
Speaker 1: Jason Bourne, Yeah he had amnesia. Yeah. Um, fifty first Dates.
53:34
Speaker 1: That was a cute one about amnesia. It's a cute movie.
53:38
Speaker 1: I didn't see it. And if you I used to
53:40
Speaker 1: see it, okay. Um, And if you reverse your perspective
53:45
Speaker 1: a little bit groundhog Day where Bill Murray has a
53:49
Speaker 1: tremendously excellent memory and everyone else has amnesia. Yea. And
53:54
Speaker 1: I think this is a great time to acknowledge the great,
53:57
Speaker 1: great Harold Ramos of on hog Day and Stripes and
54:01
Speaker 1: Animal House and Caddyshack and Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters. Yeah, what
54:06
Speaker 1: a loss. He defined comedy for our generation. He died
54:10
Speaker 1: at sixty nine, which is so young, so young, and
54:13
Speaker 1: check there's no way we could do an amnesia episode
54:15
Speaker 1: without mentioning Benjamin Kyle. You remember him. He was found
54:19
Speaker 1: in two thousand four in a dumpster, naked and unconscious
54:22
Speaker 1: in Richmond Hill, Georgia, and he came. We've talked about
54:26
Speaker 1: him before and like one of those one minute bs
54:28
Speaker 1: things um and he cannot remember anything. He has complete autobiographical,
54:35
Speaker 1: episodic amnesia, retrograde amnesia, and nothing is helping. They've put
54:42
Speaker 1: him on MPR, they put him on CNN, they put
54:44
Speaker 1: him on ABC, they put him on News Channel. They've
54:48
Speaker 1: done stories on him around the world. He has a
54:50
Speaker 1: website called Finding Benjamin b E N j A m
54:54
Speaker 1: A n dot com and they want to figure out
54:57
Speaker 1: who this guy is. He wants to know who he is.
54:59
Speaker 1: They have not figured it out. The case is still cold,
55:02
Speaker 1: so he's not faking it. No, if he's faking it,
55:07
Speaker 1: he has totally given himself over the idea that he
55:09
Speaker 1: will never be found out because he has put himself
55:11
Speaker 1: out there. He lives in a bureaucratic limbo because he
55:14
Speaker 1: doesn't have a Social Security number. He can't get a
55:16
Speaker 1: new one because he's he's like sixty years old, and
55:19
Speaker 1: the Feds are like, what do you need a new
55:22
Speaker 1: use your old one. We gave you one before. Um.
55:25
Speaker 1: And he has no idea there's a documentary that's coming
55:28
Speaker 1: out about him or that might be out now. Um.
55:31
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's totally legitimate case of full retrograde amnesia
55:35
Speaker 1: waking up in a dumpster naked in Georgia. And the
55:39
Speaker 1: reason he's called Benjamin Kyle is because he's pretty sure
55:41
Speaker 1: his first name was Benjamin. But um, when he was
55:44
Speaker 1: taken to the hospital, there was already a John Doe there,
55:48
Speaker 1: so they called him b K because they was found
55:50
Speaker 1: behind a Burger king, So he took the name Benjamin Kyle.
55:54
Speaker 1: It's his name, could have been Mickey d could be anything. Wow, Well,
55:58
Speaker 1: faking it is a thing, I think. Um. I think Hess,
56:02
Speaker 1: Rudolph Hess, the Nazi. I didn't look this up, but
56:07
Speaker 1: I think I remember somewhere that he faked amnesia to
56:11
Speaker 1: get out of his war crimes for a period. I
56:15
Speaker 1: believe it. That guy was s ob all around. Yeah,
56:18
Speaker 1: here's a Nazi, I know. I think he did fake amnesian.
56:21
Speaker 1: I think he even fooled his doctors for a time,
56:23
Speaker 1: but then later admitted that he had faked it. I
56:26
Speaker 1: might be wrong. Did generate. I didn't do specific research
56:28
Speaker 1: on that, so we'll see he was a black shirt though,
56:31
Speaker 1: No way, he was a brown shirt. I got it
56:33
Speaker 1: wrong again. Brown shirts with the German black shirts were Italian. Okay,
56:38
Speaker 1: all right, Uh, well that's amnisia. You got anything else,
56:41
Speaker 1: sir man, If you want to read more about it,
56:44
Speaker 1: you should type amnesia into the search bar at how
56:47
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com and it will bring up this article.
56:49
Speaker 1: Since I said search parts time for a listener mail. Uh.
56:55
Speaker 1: This is from a termite expert. He was a pest
56:58
Speaker 1: control operator for seven and a half years and on
57:00
Speaker 1: the board of the New York State Pest Management Association.
57:04
Speaker 1: Hey guys, when you talked about a termidicide treatment, you
57:08
Speaker 1: stated it is injected into the colony. Uh. This isn't
57:11
Speaker 1: quite right. Could be misleading to the average homeowner. Uh,
57:14
Speaker 1: it makes them think that the colony will be killed off.
57:18
Speaker 1: What really happens is that termidicide is injected to form
57:22
Speaker 1: a barrier on a few inches of treated soil around
57:25
Speaker 1: the foundation of the house. When termites come into contact
57:28
Speaker 1: with it, they shortly die. Eventually, the colony realizes something
57:31
Speaker 1: is wrong and send out alarm pheromones to uh, for
57:34
Speaker 1: the others to avoid it. As to the bait, you stated,
57:37
Speaker 1: it might leach into the soil. This makes for good
57:40
Speaker 1: radio or podcasting, but again it's an alarm to the homeowner. Uh,
57:46
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily true. Bait is solid and small and
57:49
Speaker 1: it will not leach, but it will explode. When I
57:54
Speaker 1: was in the business, there were two types of bait.
57:55
Speaker 1: The first was a poison like bait for mice you
57:57
Speaker 1: put in your home. We didn't use that, but it
58:00
Speaker 1: is a but that's about it and simple to understand. H.
58:04
Speaker 1: The idea is hopefully they will realize something is wrong
58:06
Speaker 1: and not come back. The second type of bait, which
58:08
Speaker 1: we used, interfered with the molting process. You could actually
58:12
Speaker 1: see them turn a milky white. As young termites could
58:15
Speaker 1: not grow. The colony died as a nation would die
58:18
Speaker 1: if no new children were born. Like the movie Children
58:21
Speaker 1: of Men, that's a good movie. This program was the
58:24
Speaker 1: only one at the time that would eliminate a colony.
58:27
Speaker 1: I hate to nitpick. You guys run a good show,
58:29
Speaker 1: and I just want to see it done right. And
58:31
Speaker 1: that is from Sean Duffy of Pittsburg, a termite expert
58:36
Speaker 1: who likes to pick knits. Hey, thanks Sean, Right, yeah, uh,
58:41
Speaker 1: we appreciate that. Actually, I'm just teasing. Uh. If you
58:46
Speaker 1: want to tell us something we misstated, slightly or otherwise,
58:49
Speaker 1: you can let us know. Join us on Twitter at
58:52
Speaker 1: s y s K podcast is our handle. Join us
58:54
Speaker 1: on Facebook, dot com slash Stuff you Should Know, check
58:56
Speaker 1: out our YouTube channel just search Josh and Chucky, and
59:00
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59:02
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59:10
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59:12
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