A Critical Discussion of the Relationship Between Memory and Amnesia with Specific Reference to the Definitions of Memory, Types of Memory, Stages of Memory Processing, Types of Amnesia and the Main Brain Structures

A CRITICAL DISCUSSION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MEMORY AND AMNESIA WITH SPECIFIC REFERENCE TO THE DEFINITIONS OF MEMORY, TYPES OF MEMORY, STAGES OF MEMORY PROCESSING, TYPES OF AMNESIA AND THE MAIN BRAIN STRUCTURES THAT ARE INVOLVED/ASSOCIATED WITH BOTH.

The American Heritage Medical Dictionary (2007) states MEMORY as ‘the mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experience based on the mental processes of learning, retention, recall , and recognition’ and AMNESIA is defined as ‘partial or total loss of memory, usually resulting from shock, psychological disturbance, brain injury, or illness’.

Memory is the ability we have to take in, make sense of, store, and recall everything about us and around us over our lifetime. Being able to use this information to learn and adapt from, and through our everyday experiences, live our daily lives and also to build all relationships - ultimately affect the true quality with which we live our lives. Losing some aspects or most of this ability through any form of amnesia, can have a devastating effect on the very being of a person’s existence.

Memory is our ability to encode, store, retain and subsequently recall information and past experiences in our brain. The memory we are using day to day is actually our long term memory, but to establish that very knowledge, we must go through certain sensory and short term memory processes first. The process of memorization entails that different types of memory work together, each operating in a specific mode from less than one second to a life time of storage.

To understand the stages of memory processing best one can look at the ‘Stage Theory’ that is based on the work of Atkinson and Shriffin (1968). This model explains the processing and storage of information in 3 stages, as information moves in a serial, discontinuous manner from one stage to the next:

1. Sensory memory processing: Information is received via stimuli from the five senses (sight,...