Amnesia: Who Are You Anyway? Essay -- Biology Essays Research Papers

Amnesia: Who Are You Anyway? "Should the soul of a prince, carrying with it the consciousness of the prince's past life, enter and inform the body of a cobbler, as soon as deserted by his own soul, every one sees he would be the same person with the prince, accountable only for the prince's actions: but who would say it was the same man?" --"Of Identity and Diversity", John Locke "Where am I? How did I get here?" "You were in a car accident last night. You're in the hospital, but you will be fine" "Accident? What accident? And who are you?" "Don't you know who I am? I'm your little sister." Sound familiar? How about another scenario? "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my client has been under the influence of some form of memory loss at the time of the murder. Studies and tests have proved that this is the case. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, can we imprison a man for committing a crime for which he has no knowledge of recollecting?" These two scenarios depict typical instances of patients with amnesia or at least claim to have amnesia. Amnesia means a loss of memory from a failure of some part of the memory system (1). It is defined as a special case of forgetting, since the loss of memory is greater than expected under ordinary circumstances (2). In severe cases of amnesia, memory loss can result from a two-sided or bilateral (both hemispheres) damage to parts of the brain vital for memory storage, processing, or recall. These parts involve the limbic system, which includes of the hippocampus in the medial temporal lobe of the brain) (1). The hippocampus encodes memory for events and episodes. Memories, either short term or long term, are not stored in the hippocampus. But instead, information gets pro... ...duced Blandness... http://www.macalester.edu/~psych/whathap/diaries/diariesf96/Kai/diary12.html 4)TRAUMATIC AMNESIA, REPRESSION, AND HIPPOCAMPUS INJURY DUE TO EMOTIONAL STRESS, CORTICOSTEROIDS AND ENKEPHALINS http://www.brain/ 5)Amnesia http://psych.colorado.edu/~dhuber/p2145/amnesia.html 6)Amnesia http://empresas.mundivia.es/braincenter/Amnesia.htm 7)Memory Impairment: The Amnesia, COMMENTS ABOUT IT http://www.tbilaw.com/AboutMildBrain16.html 8)Amnesia http://www.tbilaw.com/AboutMildBrain16.html 9)Briefing Notes: Amnesia http://www.ntu.ac.uk/soc/bscpsych/memory/amnbrief.htm 10)Children with amnesia cast new light on memory and learning http://expressindia.com/ie/daily/19970720/20150363.html 11)" Perry, John. Personal Identity. "John Locke: Of Identity and Diversity." University of California Press: Los Angeles, 1975. "