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How Amnesia Works · Stuff You Should Know

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