Amnesia - a Defect in Memory Recovery or in Memory Storage?

Beautiful and sweet memories which have lighted up past days in some people's lives can simply be forgotten when someone suffers from amnesia. This is a common known fact. But how exactly does this happen? Is there a biological flaw of our brain when it comes to storing memories - amnesic people literally 'live the moment' and they lead their lives in a continuous present? Or amnesia patients; brain has the ability to store the memories, but they cannot 'recover' them?

A collection of articles on this controversial, yet very interesting subject have been recently published in the Learning & Memory Journal. Dr. Larry Squire, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, wrote: "Questions about the nature of amnesia are ultimately biological questions. But some of the best-known and most-often-cited evidence is founded on a behavioral-psychological level of analysis. What we really need to be asking is: 'In amnesia, what actually happens to the synaptic changes that carry the memory?'"

Studies on animals have shown that some of the amnesic 'subjects' succeeded at some point to recall to their minds past events they haven't been able to remember previously. Therefore, we could be tempted to believe that - as long as some of the memories can still come to the mind of amnesic subjects - than the particular memories must have been previously stored somewhere in the brain. In conclusion, amnesia could be thought as a defect in recovering memories.

But there are still a great deal of things which are uncertain, starting with the fact that no one can tell for sure if the animal really recalled to mind a memory of a task, for instance, or if the animal learned again the task and this is why it can perform it again.

"This compilation of articles brings many of the perspectives concerning the nature of amnesia side-by-side for consideration. We hope that it will inspire readers to think of new ways to bridge the different positions and levels of analyses, and that it will give new momentum to the search for answers to the fundamental nature of amnesia," concluded the guest editor of the Learning & Memory special amnesia section Dr. Karim Nader, Professor of Psychology at McGill University, Canada.