Memory impairment. Types of memory impairment and their symptoms Memory impairment for current events is called

Memory– reproduction of past experience, one of the main properties of the nervous system, expressed in the ability to long-term store information about events in the external world, reactions of the body and repeatedly apply it in practice.

By providing a connection between the past, present and future, memory gives stability to life experience. Memory is the most important structure ensuring the formation of individuality.

Currently, science does not have a unified and complete theory of memory. To the two previously known - psychological and physiological - a biochemical one was added. The psychological doctrine of memory is “older” than the physiological and biochemical.

One of the first psychological theories that arose in the 17th century was associative. This theory is based on the concept of association - the connection between individual mental phenomena, as well as between them and phenomena of the external world. Memory in line with this theory is understood as a complex system of short-term and long-term associations of contiguity, similarity and contrast.

The essence of the theory boils down to the following: if certain mental formations arose in consciousness simultaneously or immediately after each other, then an associative connection arises between them and the reappearance of any of the elements of this connection necessarily causes a representation of all elements in consciousness. Thanks to this theory, many patterns of functioning and mechanisms of memory were discovered and described.

But over time, a number of problems arose, one of which was the problem of explaining the selectivity of memory, which could not be understood based on the associative theory of memory.

Memory disorders

Memory disorders very diverse. The causes of certain memory disorders have been identified through numerous clinical observations of patients with various brain damage and an in-depth analysis of the characteristics of their memory impairment. Patients' memory is assessed using various psychophysiological tests. In subsequent works by domestic and foreign clinicians, a large amount of clinical and psychological research material was systematized, making it possible to draw certain conclusions about the causes of certain forms of memory disorders. Based on the study of the characteristics of memory disorders in patients with various brain damage, a distinction is made between partial and general amnesia.

Amnesia

One of the most common memory disorders is amnesia - partial or complete loss of memory. Memory gaps can be for certain periods of time, for individual events. Such partial amnesia is most pronounced in a person who has lost consciousness (for example, during an epileptic seizure), as well as in stupor or coma.

Progressive amnesia

In patients with severe cerebral atherosclerosis and organic damage to the central nervous system, gradually increasing memory loss can be observed. This is the so-called progressive amnesia. With it, current events disappear from memory first; long-past phenomena are relatively preserved (Ribot's law), which is typical primarily for older people. In case of traumatic brain injury or other cerebral pathology of organic origin, events preceding the disease often disappear from memory. This is a characteristic sign of retrograde amnesia.

Anterograde amnesia

Lack of memory for events that immediately followed the onset of the disease, for example, a traumatic brain injury, is called anterograde amnesia. In psychiatry clinics, fixation amnesia is often observed. It manifests itself in the inability to remember current events and newly received information. This disorder most often occurs in Korsakov's amnestic syndrome.

Hypermnesia

Exacerbation of memories - hypermnesia - a simultaneous slight change in the memory function is observed in severe infectious diseases, as well as in a manic state. It should be noted that as recovery occurs, hypermnesia disappears and memory fixation returns to its previous level.

Hypomnesia

In severe depressive states, accompanied by severe melancholy and depression, patients complain of increased memory for unpleasant events and misfortunes of the distant past. At the same time, the process of memorization generally decreases and hypomnesia develops: at first, the reproduction of terms, names, and main dates becomes difficult, and subsequently the fixation properties of memory are weakened. Hyponesia affects elderly people with atherosclerotic lesions of the cerebral vessels. It also occurs in traumatic diseases.

Paramnesia

Qualitative memory disorders - paramnesia - are erroneous, false memories. These include pseudo-reminiscences, characterized by the fact that the patient fills in memory gaps with events that happened earlier, but not at the time he points to. For example, a patient, while in a hospital for treatment, claims for several days that he supposedly went to Polotsk yesterday. He really was in Polotsk, but at a different time.

Confabulation

Qualitative memory disorders also include confabulations. This is a state when memory gaps are filled with fictitious, often fantastic events that did not take place. The content of confabulations is very diverse, which is determined by the patient’s personality, his mood, the degree of intellectual development and the ability to imagine and fantasy. Pseudo-reminiscences and confabulations are symptoms of the development of senile dementia.

Cryptomnesia

Sometimes there is such a weakening of memory in which the patient cannot distinguish facts and events that actually took place from those he has ever heard, read or seen in a dream. This is cryptomnesia.

Causes of memory disorders

For a long time, the causes of various memory disorders were interpreted from the point of view of narrowly localized ideas about this complex mental function. In particular, it was believed that the mammillary bodies were the center of memory. Developing this point of view, scientists came to the conclusion that the pathological mechanisms of memory impairment are the result of damage to the higher parts of the brain (cerebral cortex).

A significant argument in favor of this thesis was the complete cessation of the transfer of information from one hemisphere to the other after transection of the corpus callosum. The responsibility of individual areas of the brain for memory function was confirmed during surgical interventions, during which electrical stimulation of individual areas of the cortex awakened in a person the memory of long-past events.

Thus, one woman during an operation heard the voice of her little son coming from the yard along with the street noise. It seemed to another patient that she was giving birth, and, moreover, in exactly the same environment that actually existed many years ago.

When scientists tried to identify specific areas of the cortex responsible for memory function, it was discovered that traces of it are activated when the temporal lobe is irritated by current. At the same time, it was found that when the pathological focus is localized in the occipital part, visual memory is impaired, and in the temporal part, auditory memory is impaired.

Damage to the frontal lobe leads to impairment of semantic memory. However, these hypotheses should not be considered absolutely proven, since some patients exhibit memory impairment in the absence of any organic changes in the central nervous system.

Even the most thorough clinical examination does not reveal its organic changes, for example, in patients with memory disorders due to strong emotional experiences, reactive psychoses (affectogenic, psychogenic amnesia).

Despite the fact that irritation of certain zones of the cortex causes the revival of traces of past events, they differ qualitatively from ordinary memories in their excessive clarity and brightness. Patients, as a rule, relive these events and never regard them as memories.

Solving the problem of the memory mechanism, Sechenov and Pavlov, based on data from numerous studies, established that it is based on trace conditioned reflexes. In this case, the physiological basis of memory comes down to the association of trace signals with signals coming from the environment.

This is confirmed by the fact that in people suffering from mental disorders in old age, with a developing decrease in the reactive nervous system, there is a deterioration or complete absence of the revival of old and the formation of new conditioned connections. In recent years, the biochemical theory of memory has become increasingly established.

It boils down to the fact that various types of metabolism in the brain, and primarily ribonucleic acid (RNA), under the influence of bioelectric potentials emanating from analyzers, determine the formation of a protein that carries encoded information. When information similar to the previous one enters the brain again, the same neurons in which the trace was preserved begin to resonate. Disruption of nucleic acid metabolism, and especially RNA, leads to memory disorders.

Treatment and correction of memory disorders

Today there are many drugs that stimulate the activity of nerve cells and improve memory. The fact is that human memory is a very subtle and well-functioning system that has developed over hundreds of millions of years and works optimally in a healthy person. Do not forget that nature already has various mechanisms for regulating the activity of nerve cells. In the meantime, doctors recommend using only mild medications, taking them along with a daily dose of vitamins.

There are other ways to correct memory. The simplest and most accessible is proper sleep and a balanced diet. It is known that in most cases, food poor in proteins and vitamins reduces the ability to remember.

Including foods rich in magnesium, calcium and glutamic acid in your daily diet helps improve memory:

• dried apricots;
• beet;
• dates;
• nuts;
• beans;
• greenery;
• wheat sprouts.

And they usually resort to tea and coffee during intense mental work, in particular, when they need to quickly remember something - and they do exactly the right thing.

Experiments have proven that alkaloids, caffeine and theophylline, which are contained in tea and coffee, inhibit the action of phosphodiesterase and thereby prevent the destruction of the natural source of cellular energy - cyclic adenosine monophosphate.

At the same time, not only its level increases in the brain, but also the level of all mediator substances that are directly related to the memorization of information: adrenocorticotropic hormone, vasopressin, a number of hypothalamic hormones that promote the creation of positive emotions.

Thus, a favorable background arises for the perception, processing, storage and reproduction of information (retrieving it from the “memory storerooms”). And all this can be done with one cup of coffee or tea! For science and practice, it is important in what ways and means one can increase brain capacity and activate memory processes.

Questions and answers on the topic "Memory disorders"

Question:A 20-year-old girl had a ruptured brain aneurysm and was operated on. Three years have passed and my memory has not fully recovered. She forgets the events of the past day; if she remembers an event, she does not remember when it was. She can tell you something that has never happened to her. She is prescribed medications to improve blood circulation. Are there any other methods for improving memory? Will the memory be fully restored?

Answer: Memory impairment is a common occurrence after neurosurgical operations, but most often memory is gradually restored. To improve memory, you can use nootropics, for example, Piracetam, vitamin B - they will speed up general rehabilitation after surgery.

Question:My mother is 75 years old. 4 years ago we (her relatives) began to notice a deterioration in my mother’s memory. She asks the same thing several times at intervals of 2-3 minutes, in the evening she does not remember what she did in the morning, she remembers her childhood years very well - the war years, she is oriented in time, she takes only piracetam and memorial. It’s very hard to leave her, she’s like a little child - she’s about to cry. There are no other diseases, we consulted a neurologist, she said that medications for memory restoration have not yet been invented. What can and should we do for mom, how can we cure her, or at least make sure that the disease does not progress? Thanks in advance for your answer.

Answer: Unfortunately, there is every reason to believe that your mother is sick with a neurodegenerative disease - Alzheimer's disease. There is really no truly effective treatment for this disease. Usually in such cases nootropic substances are prescribed - your mother is already taking them. Most likely you will have to come to terms with the fading of her memory. We also recommend doing an MRI of the brain to rule out other causes of amnesia (memory loss).

Question:Hello, I'm 28 years old, but I don't have a good memory. At one time I even just read and memorized it, taught it to train my memory, but it remained that way. It’s hard for me to remember something, I can forget right away, then of course I’ll remember, but it’s too late. Tell me, maybe there are some pills that help improve memory? Thank you.

Answer: You need to consult with a neurologist and undergo an MRI examination of the brain and Doppler examination of the vessels of the neck, and only after that undergo a course of treatment.

Question:Hello! My father is 65 years old and has short-term memory loss. Why?

Answer: There is a high probability that the cause of this phenomenon was multiple sclerosis or cerebral circulatory disorders. In any case, only a neurologist can identify the cause of this phenomenon after a personal consultation and a comprehensive examination.

The term memory in psychiatry includes the accumulation of information, storage and timely reproduction of accumulated experience. Memory is considered one of the most important adaptation mechanisms, since it allows you to retain thoughts, past sensations, conclusions, and acquired skills in your head for a long time. Memory is the basis of the work of intelligence.

The mechanisms of memory are not fully understood to date. However, it is already reliably known that there is memory based on quickly formed temporary connections - short-term, and memory with stronger connections - long-term.

The basis of both types is the chemical rearrangement of protein structures, RNA and activation of intercellular synapses. The transition of information from short-term to long-term memory is facilitated by the work of the temporal lobes of the brain and the limbic system. This assumption was based on the fact that when these brain formations are damaged, the process of fixing information is disrupted.

General etiology of memory disorders

Most often, memory impairments are caused by organic pathology and are persistent and irreversible. However, the pathology can also be symptomatic of disorders in other areas of the psyche. So, for example, increased distractibility in combination with accelerated thinking in patients with manic syndrome leads to a temporary disruption in the capture of information. Temporary memory impairment also occurs with impaired consciousness.

The process of memory formation occurs in three phases: imprinting (registration), storage (retention) and reproduction (reproduction). The influence of an etiological factor can occur at any phase of memory formation, but in practice it is extremely rare to find out.

Classification of memory disorders

Memory disorders are divided into quantitative - dysmnesia, and qualitative - paramnesia. The first includes hypermnesia, hypomnesia and various types of amnesia. The group of paramnesias includes pseudoreminiscences, confabulations, cryptomnesias and echonesias.

Dysmnesia

Hypermnesia– a term that defines the involuntary, disorderly actualization of past experience. The influx of past memories, often with the smallest details, distracts the patient, interferes with the assimilation of new information, and impairs the productivity of thinking. Hypermnesia can accompany the course of manic syndrome and occur when taking psychotropic substances (opium, LSD, phenamine). An involuntary influx of memories can occur during epileptiform paroxysm.

Hypomnesia– weakening of memory. As a rule, with hypomnesia, all components of memory are affected. It is difficult for the patient to remember new names and dates. Patients with hypomnesia forget details of past events, cannot reproduce information stored deep in memory, and they increasingly try to write down information that they could previously remember without difficulty. When reading a book, people with hypomnesia often lose the general plot line, to restore which they constantly have to go back several pages. With hypomnesia, a common symptom such as anekphoria– a situation in which the patient, without outside help, cannot extract words, titles, names from memory. The cause of hypomnesia is often vascular pathology of the brain, in particular atherosclerosis. However, it is necessary to mention the existence of functional hypomnesia, for example, due to overwork.

Amnesia– a collective term that refers to a group of various memory disorders in which loss of any of its areas occurs.

Retrograde amnesia– amnesia that developed before the onset of the disease. This phenomenon can be observed in acute cerebral vascular accidents. Most patients note a loss of time immediately preceding the development of the disease. The explanation for this lies in the fact that in the short period of time before loss of consciousness, new information has not yet had time to move into long-term memory and therefore is subsequently lost forever.

It should be noted that organic brain damage most often does not affect information closely related to the patient’s personality: he remembers his name, date of birth, remembers information about his childhood, and school skills are preserved.

Congrade amnesia– loss of memory during the period of illness. It is not so much a consequence of a disorder of memory function as such, but rather the inability to perceive any information. Congrade amnesia occurs in people in a coma or state of stupor.

Anterograde amnesia– amnesia that developed for events that occurred after the completion of the most acute manifestations of the disease. At the same time, the patient is quite communicative and can answer the questions posed, but after some time he is no longer able to reproduce the events that took place the day before. If anterograde amnesia was the cause of twilight impairment of consciousness, then the fixation ability of memory can be restored. Anterograde amnesia in Korsakoff's syndrome is irreversible, as it develops as a result of a persistent loss of the ability to record information.

Fixation amnesia– a term used to denote a sharp decrease or complete loss of the ability to long-term retain newly acquired information in memory. Patients with fixation amnesia have difficulty remembering events and words that have just happened or very recently, but they retain memory of what happened before the disease, and often their professional skills. The ability for intellectual activity is often preserved. However, memory disorder leads to such deep disorientation of the patient that there is no need to talk about independent work. Fixation amnesia is part of Korsakoff's syndrome and also occurs in atherosclerotic dementia.

Progressive amnesia– is often a consequence of progressive organic damage to the brain and consists of a sequential loss of increasingly deeper layers of memory. In 1882, psychiatrist T. Ribot formulated the sequence with which memory is destroyed. Ribot's law states that hypomnesia first appears, then amnesia for recent events develops, after which events that happened long ago begin to be forgotten. Next, the loss of organized knowledge develops. The last things to be erased from memory are emotional impressions and the simplest automatic skills. The destruction of the surface layers of memory sharpens the memories of childhood and adolescence.

Progressive amnesia can occur in non-stroke cerebral atherosclerosis and accompany Alzheimer's disease, Pick's disease, and senile dementia.

Paramnesia

TO paramnesia include such memory disorders in which distortions or perversions of the content of memories are observed.

Pseudoreminescence- the process of replacing lost memories with other events that occurred in reality, but in a different time period. Pseudoreminences are a reflection of another point of the law on the destruction of memory: the content of the experience - the memory of the content - persists longer than the temporary relationships of events - the memory of time.

Confabulation is the process of replacing memory loss with fictitious events. Confabulations often indicate a loss of criticism and comprehension of the situation, since patients not only do not remember that these events never happened, but also do not understand that they could not have happened. Such vicarious confabulations should be differentiated from confabulatory delusions, which are not accompanied by the loss of previous memories, but are manifested by the fact that the patient believes that the fantastic events that happened to him took place. In addition, replacement confabulations are a component of Korsakoff's syndrome, fantastic confabulations are a part of paraphrenic syndrome.

Cryptomnesia– memory disorders, when the patient fills in its missing links with events that he heard about somewhere, read, or saw in a dream. Cryptomnesia is not so much a loss of information itself, but a loss of the ability to identify its source. Cryptomnesia often leads to the fact that patients take credit for the creation of any works of art, poetry, or scientific discoveries.

Echomnesia (Pick's reduplicating paramnesia)- the feeling that something happening at the present moment has already happened in the past. Unlike the déjà vu phenomenon, with echonesia there is no paroxysmal fear and the phenomenon of “insight”. Echoomnesia can accompany various organic brain diseases, especially lesions of the parietotemporal region.

Korsakov's amnestic syndrome

The syndrome was described by the scientist S.S. Korsakov in 1887 as a manifestation of alcoholic psychosis. However, it was later noticed that a similar combination of symptoms can be observed in other disorders.

One of the important signs of Korsakoff's syndrome is fixation amnesia. Such patients cannot remember the name of the attending physician or the names of their roommates.

The second component of Korsakoff's syndrome is anterograde or retroanterograde amnesia. The patient tries to fill the gaps in memory with paramnesia.

Significant memory impairment leads to amnestic disorientation of the patient. However, in a patient with Korsakoff's syndrome, orientation in a familiar environment (for example, at home) can be preserved.

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Memory impairment is a disorder that significantly impairs the quality of life of individuals and is quite common. There are two basic types of human memory impairment, namely qualitative and quantitative disorders of memory function. The qualitative type of abnormal functioning is expressed in the occurrence of erroneous (false) memories, in the confusion of reality, cases from the past and imaginary situations. Quantitative defects are found in the weakening or strengthening of memory traces, and in addition in the loss of biological reflection of events.

Memory impairments are quite diverse, most of them are characterized by short duration and reversibility. Basically, such disorders are provoked by overwork, neurotic conditions, the influence of medications and excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages. Others are generated by more significant reasons and are much more difficult to correct. So, for example, in combination, a violation of memory and attention, as well as mental function (), is considered a more serious disorder, leading to a decrease in the adaptation mechanism of the individual, which makes him dependent on others.

Causes of memory impairment

There are a huge number of factors that provoke disorders of cognitive functions of the psyche. For example, human memory impairments can be triggered by the presence of asthenic syndrome, manifested in rapid fatigue, exhaustion of the body, and also arise due to the individual’s high anxiety, traumatic brain injuries, age-related changes, depression, alcoholism, intoxication, and micronutrient deficiency.

Memory impairment in children can be due to congenital mental underdevelopment or an acquired condition, which is usually expressed in the deterioration of the immediate processes of memorizing and reproducing received information (hypomnesia) or in the loss of certain moments from memory (amnesia).

Amnesia in young representatives of society is often a consequence of trauma, the presence of mental illness, or severe poisoning. Partial memory defects in children are most often observed as a result of the influence of the following factors in combination: an unfavorable psychological microclimate in family relationships or in a children's group, frequent asthenic conditions, including those caused by persistent acute respiratory infections, and hypovitaminosis.

Nature has arranged it this way that from the moment of birth, infants’ memory is constantly developing and, therefore, is vulnerable to unfavorable environmental factors. Among such unfavorable factors are: difficult pregnancy and difficult childbirth, birth injuries to the child, long-term chronic illnesses, lack of competent stimulation of memory formation, and an excessive load on the children’s nervous system associated with an excessive amount of information.

In addition, memory impairment in children can also occur after suffering from somatic diseases during the recovery process.

In adults, this disorder can occur due to constant exposure to stress factors, the presence of various ailments of the nervous system (for example, encephalitis or Parkinson's disease), neuroses, drug addiction and abuse of alcoholic beverages, mental illnesses, etc.

In addition, somatic diseases are considered to be an equally important factor that strongly affects the ability to remember, in which there is damage to the vessels supplying the brain, which leads to pathologies of cerebral circulation. Such ailments include: hypertension, diabetes mellitus, vascular atherosclerosis, pathologies of the functioning of the thyroid gland.

Also, impairment of short-term memory can often be directly related to a deficiency or failure to absorb certain vitamins.

Basically, if the natural aging process is not burdened by any accompanying ailments, then the decline in the functioning of the cognitive mental process occurs very slowly. At first, it becomes more difficult to remember events that happened a long time ago; gradually, as an individual ages, he cannot remember events that happened quite recently.

Impaired memory and attention can also occur due to iodine deficiency in the body. When the thyroid gland is underactive, individuals experience excess weight, lethargy, depression, irritability, and muscle swelling. To avoid the problems described, you must constantly monitor your diet and eat as many iodine-rich foods as possible, for example, seafood, hard cheese, and nuts.

Not in all cases, individuals' forgetfulness should be equated with memory dysfunction. Often the subject consciously seeks to forget difficult life moments, unpleasant, and often tragic events. In this case, forgetfulness plays the role of a defense mechanism. When an individual represses unpleasant facts from memory - this is called repression; when he is sure that traumatic events did not occur at all - this is called denial; displacing negative emotions on another object is called replacement.

Symptoms of memory impairment

The mental function that provides recording, preservation and reproduction (playback) of various impressions and events, the ability to accumulate data and use previously acquired experience is called memory.

The phenomena of the cognitive mental process can equally be related to the emotional area and the area of ​​cognition, recording of motor processes and mental experience. According to this, there are several types of memory.

Figurative is the ability to remember a variety of images.
Motor determines the ability to remember the sequence and configuration of movements. There is also memory for mental states, for example, emotional or visceral sensations such as pain or discomfort.

Symbolic is specific to a person. With the help of this type of cognitive mental process, subjects remember words, thoughts and ideas (logical memorization).
Short-term involves imprinting in memory a large amount of regularly arriving information for a short time, then such information is eliminated or stored in a long-term storage slot. Long-term memory is associated with the selective preservation for a long time of the information that is most significant for an individual.

The amount of RAM consists of currently relevant information. The ability to remember data as it really is, without creating logical connections, is called mechanical memory. This type of cognitive mental process is not considered the foundation of intelligence. With the help of mechanical memory, proper names and numbers are mainly remembered.

Memorization occurs with the development of logical connections during associative memory. During memorization, data is compared and summarized, analyzed and systematized.

In addition, involuntary memory and voluntary memorization are distinguished. Involuntary memorization accompanies the activity of the individual and is not associated with the intention to record anything. A voluntary cognitive mental process is associated with a preliminary indication of memorization. This type is the most productive and is the basis of learning, but requires special conditions (comprehension of the memorized material, maximum attention and concentration).

All disorders of the cognitive mental process can be divided into categories: temporary (lasting from two minutes to a couple of years), episodic, progressive, and Korsakoff's syndrome, which is a violation of short-term memory.

The following types of memory impairment can be distinguished: disorder of memorization, storage, forgetting and reproduction of various data and personal experience. There are qualitative disorders (paramnesia), which manifest themselves in erroneous memories, confusion between the past and the present, real and imaginary, and quantitative disorders, which manifest themselves in a weakening, loss, or strengthening of the reflection of events in memory.

Quantitative memory defects are dysmnesia, which includes hypermnesia and hypomnesia, as well as amnesia.

Amnesia is the loss of various information and skills from the cognitive mental process for a certain period of time.

Amnesia is characterized by spread over time periods that differ in duration.

Gaps in memory are stable, stationary, and in most cases, memories partially or completely return.

Acquired specific knowledge and skills, for example, the ability to drive a car, can also be affected by amnesia.

Loss of memory for situations preceding a state of transformed consciousness, organic brain damage, hypoxia, or the development of acute psychotic syndrome is called retrograde amnesia.

Retrograde amnesia manifests itself in the absence of a cognitive mental process for the period before the onset of pathology. For example, an individual with a skull injury can forget everything that happened to him for ten days before the injury occurred. Loss of memory for a period after the onset of the disease is called anterograde amnesia. The duration of these two types of amnesia can vary from a couple of hours to two to three months. There is also retroanterograde amnesia, which covers a long stage of loss of the cognitive mental process, which includes the period of time before the onset of the disease and the period after.

Fixation amnesia is manifested by the subject’s inability to retain and consolidate incoming information. Everything that happens around such a patient is perceived adequately by him, but is not stored in memory and after a few minutes, often even seconds, such a patient completely forgets what is happening.

Fixation amnesia is a loss of the ability to remember and reproduce new information. The ability to remember current, recent situations is weakened or absent, while previously acquired knowledge is retained in memory.

Problems of memory impairment with fixation amnesia are found in the disturbance of orientation in time, surrounding persons, surroundings and situations (amnestic disorientation).

Total amnesia is manifested by the loss of all information from the individual’s memory, including even data about himself. An individual with total amnesia does not know his own name, does not suspect his own age, place of residence, that is, he cannot remember anything from his own past life. Total amnesia most often occurs with a serious skull injury, less often it occurs with ailments of a functional nature (under obvious stressful circumstances).

Palimpsest is detected due to a state of alcoholic intoxication and is manifested by the loss of individual events from the cognitive mental process.

Hysterical amnesia is expressed in failures of the cognitive mental process related to unpleasant, unfavorable facts and circumstances for the individual. Hysterical amnesia, as well as the protective mechanism of repression, is observed not only in sick people, but also in healthy individuals who are characterized by accentuation of the hysterical type.

Gaps in memory that are filled with various data are called paramnesia. It is divided into: pseudoreminiscence, confabulation, echonesia and cryptomnesia.

Pseudo-reminiscences are the replacement of gaps in the cognitive mental process with data and actual facts from the life of an individual, but significantly shifted in the time period. So, for example, a patient suffering from senile dementia and staying in a medical institution for six months, who was an excellent mathematics teacher before his illness, can assure everyone that two minutes ago he taught geometry classes in the 9th grade.

Confabulations are manifested by replacing memory gaps with fabrications of a fantastic nature, while the patient is one hundred percent sure of the reality of such fabrications. For example, an eighty-year-old patient suffering from cerebrosclerosis reports that a moment ago he was interrogated simultaneously by Ivan the Terrible and Afanasy Vyazemsky. Any attempts to prove that the above famous personalities are long dead are futile.

Memory deception, characterized by the perception of events occurring at a given time as events that occurred earlier, is called echonesia.

Ecmnesia is a memory trick that involves living the distant past as the present. For example, older people begin to consider themselves young and prepare for a wedding.

Cryptomnesias are gaps filled with data, the source of which the sick individual forgets. He may not remember whether an event happened in reality or in a dream; he takes thoughts read in books as his own. For example, patients often quote poems from famous poets and pass them off as their own.

As a type of cryptomnesia, one can consider alienated memory, which consists in the patient’s perception of the events of his life not as actually lived moments, but as seen in a movie or read in a book.

Exacerbation of memory is called hypermnesia and it manifests itself in the form of an influx of a large number of memories, which are often characterized by the presence of sensory images and directly cover the event and its individual parts. They appear more often in the form of chaotic scenes, less often - connected by one complex plot direction.

Hypermnesia is often characteristic of people suffering from manic-depressive psychosis, schizophrenics, and people in the initial stages of alcohol intoxication or under the influence of marijuana.

Hypomnesia is a weakening of memory. Often, hypomnesia is expressed in the form of uneven disruption of various processes and, first of all, the preservation and reproduction of acquired information. With hypomnesia, the memory of current events is predominantly significantly impaired, which may accompany progressive or fixation amnesia.

Memory impairment occurs in a certain sequence. First, recent events are forgotten, then earlier ones. The primary manifestation of hypomnesia is considered to be a violation of selective memories, that is, memories that are needed precisely at this moment; they can emerge later. Basically, the listed types of disorders and manifestations are observed in patients suffering from brain pathologies or in elderly people.

Treatment of memory impairment

The problems of this disorder are easier to prevent than to treat. Therefore, many exercises have been developed to keep your own memory in good shape. Regular exercise helps minimize the risk of disorders by preventing vascular diseases that cause memory impairment.

In addition, training memory and thinking abilities helps not only save, but also improve the cognitive mental process. According to many studies, there are far fewer patients with Alzheimer's disease among educated individuals than among uneducated individuals.

Also, consuming vitamins C and E and consuming foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids reduces the risk of Alzheimer's disease.

Diagnosis of memory disorders is based on two key principles:

To establish the disease that led to the violation (includes collection of anamnestic data, analysis of neurological status, computed tomography, ultrasound or angiographic examination of cerebral vessels if necessary, blood sampling for the content of thyroid-stimulating hormones;

To determine the severity and nature of the pathology of memory function using neuropsychological testing.

Diagnosis of memory disorders is carried out using various psychological techniques aimed at examining all types of memory. For example, in patients with hypomnesia, for the most part, short-term memory deteriorates. To study this type of memory, the patient is asked to repeat a certain sentence with a “line addition”. A patient with hypomnesia is unable to repeat all spoken phrases.

First of all, the treatment of any violations of this disorder depends directly on the factors that provoked their development.

Drugs for memory impairment are prescribed only after a full diagnostic examination and exclusively by a specialist.

To correct mild dysfunction of this disorder, various physiotherapeutic methods are used, for example, electrophoresis with glutamic acid administered through the nose.

Psychological and pedagogical correctional influence is also successfully used. The teacher teaches patients to remember information using other brain processes to replace the affected ones. So, for example, if a patient is not able to remember the name of objects spoken out loud, then he can be taught to remember by presenting a visual image of such an object.

Medicines for memory impairment are prescribed in accordance with the illness that provoked the memory disorder. For example, if the disorder is caused by overwork, then tonic medications (Eleutherococcus extract) will help. Often, when memory functions are impaired, doctors prescribe nootropic drugs (Lucetam, Nootropil).

Doctor of the Medical and Psychological Center "PsychoMed"

memory disorders) It is believed that the information received. and the events experienced are more or less permanently recorded in memory. To understand memory, an analogy with the process of information processing may be useful. Inform. enters through the channels of sensory perception, is processed, stored, evoked and used. The operations used in this case have the functions of adequate coding of information, linking related events, ranking by importance and selection of information. to avoid confusion. It is obvious that effective search and extraction of information. is the goal of any memory system, but achieving this is not always an easy matter. This operation may be complicated by the lack of information. When too much information is received, the memory capacity may become overloaded and the information may be overloaded. gets lost. When too much time passes between moments of information retrieval, old memories fade. The extraction operation may also be hampered by unavailability of information. Inadequate prioritization of information. may make it impossible to extract the most important information; weakening of attention and high similarity of encodings used to designate different contents can cause confusion and interference of information retrieved from memory. Memory loss as a result of the absence and/or inaccessibility of information. manifests itself in the most common, non-pathological form of memory disorders: forgetting. Forgetting due to the loss of accumulated information. can occur as a result of too infrequent access to it or a change in priorities (when recently received information becomes more important compared to previously received, making it impossible to retrieve earlier information). The usual cause of forgetting is confusion or interference of acoustically or semantically similar information. Amnesia, or memory loss, can be anterograde or retrograde; it is caused by emotional or cerebral trauma and abuse of alcohol or barbiturates. Amnesia can be: a) localized, when the ability to directly remember the episode of trauma is lost; b) selective, when it turns out to be impossible to remember certain events, for example, the death of loved ones, a car accident or experiences during the war; c) generalized, manifested by the inability to remember life events before the moment of injury (including it); d) continuous, in which memories of events are inaccessible, starting from the period of trauma to the present. Generalized and continuous types are much less common than localized and selective types. Memory impairments in the senile period are characterized by clear memories of events from the distant past that inappropriately emerge in the present moment. The information called up in this case. often appears trivial to others, but has emotional and situational importance for the individual. Memory disorders may also manifest as confabulations - telling stories to fill in memory loss caused by alcohol or other substance abuse. Substance abuse disrupts the processes of encoding and storing information, which leads to both loss of information and loss of access to it for periods that may exceed 48 hours. Similar memory loss is observed during convulsive epileptic seizures and episodes of catatonic stupor in schizophrenia. Specific mnestic disorders are observed with mental retardation. At the same time, despite repeated motor and elementary intellectual efforts to remember, memory turns out to be only short-term, rarely remaining beyond the last 24 hours. Other specific cases of memory disorders occur in aphasia. In this case, previously automated and frequently used skills of reading, speaking, writing and pattern recognition are lost due to neurological disorders caused by organic brain damage, stroke, etc. In some cases, a previously competent individual becomes alexic and loses the ability to read. In other cases, individuals with fine motor skills develop apraxia, losing the ability to perform complex movements; in a number of other cases, people who previously had high social competence, they exhibit prosopagnosia, losing the ability to recognize familiar faces. See also Attention, Sustainability of attention, Forgetting, Memory D. F. Fisher

MEMORY DISORDERS

deterioration or loss of the ability to remember, store, recognize or reproduce information. The most common memory disorders are amnesia, hypomnesia.

MEMORY DISORDER

dysmnesia) - reduction or loss of the ability to remember, store and reproduce. Memory disorders are divided into amnesia - lack of memory and paramnesia - memory deceptions.

Amnesia is the loss of the ability to preserve and reproduce the existing stock of knowledge. Amnesia is distinguished: retrograde, anterograde, anteroretrograde, reproductive, fixation and progressive.

Retrograde amnesia is a loss from memory of the events of the days, months and even years immediately preceding the present illness. Retrograde amnesia is divided into local, in which only some events are missed, and systemic, in which all events are completely missed.

Anterograde amnesia is the loss of all events immediately following the disease. The duration of the period of anterograde amnesia can be several hours, days or even weeks.

Anterograde amnesia is a combination of retrograde and anterograde amnesia, in which the patient does not remember events that occurred both before and after the onset of the disease.

Reproductive amnesia is the difficulty or inability to reproduce at the right time the necessary information, names, numbers, dates, wording, etc.

Fixation amnesia is the inability to remember, lack of memory for current events. Along with reproductive disorders, fixation amnesia underlies Korsakov's syndrome (see).

Progressive amnesia is a naturally consistent decay of memory from recently acquired new knowledge to old ones. First, the material of the last days falls out of memory, then the last months, then the years. Events from distant childhood are retained most firmly in memory. The most organized and automated knowledge acquired in early childhood is retained for quite a long time.

Paramnesia is divided into confabulation (false memories) and cryptomnesia (memory distortion). Confabulation is a memory disorder in which events that actually took place are amnesiac, and memory gaps are filled in with fiction or displacement of past memories into the present. Depending on the content, confabulations can be ordinary or fantastic. An influx of confabulations accompanied by disorientation in the environment is called confabulatory confusion.

Cryptomnesia is a distortion of memory, in which what the patient sees and hear seems to have been experienced in reality, other people’s thoughts and ideas - their own, etc. Paramnesia also includes reduplicating memories or echonesia, in which events occurring at the present moment seem to have already happened before. Difference from states<уже виденного>is that this event took place.

Memory disorders are characteristic of symptomatic psychoses, epilepsy, brain injuries, and organic diseases of the central nervous system.

Treatment. The underlying disease is being treated.

Types of memory impairment

Memory impairments can be divided into two groups - quantitative and qualitative.

I. Quantitative memory disorders include hypermnesia, hypomnesia And amnesia.

Hypomnesia- general weakening of memory, manifested in difficulties remembering dates, new names, current events. Hypomnesia is often accompanied by anekphoria, when the patient cannot remember facts that are well known to him (names of familiar objects, names of relatives, etc.), the answer seems to be “on the tip of his tongue.” The patient is usually aware of the weakening of memory and tries to compensate for it, using mnemonics, “memory” knots, reminder notes, tries to put things in the same place, etc. The main causes of hypomnesia are organic (especially vascular) diseases of the brain, intoxication due to infectious and somatic diseases, asthenic syndrome, and depression.

Hypermnesia(James McGaw's term) is a pathological exacerbation of memory, manifested by an excessive abundance of memories that emerge with extraordinary ease and cover both events as a whole and their smallest details. An example of hypermnesia is a unique memory Solomon Veniaminovich Shereshevsky, described by neuropsychologist R.A. Luria in “The Little Book of Big Memory”, as well as the case Jill Price. In his story “Funes, the miracle of memory,” the Argentine writer Borgis tried to convey the feelings experienced by people with hypermnesia:

He remembered the shapes of the southern clouds at dawn on April 30, 1882 and could mentally compare them with the marble pattern on the leather binding of a book that he had looked at only once, and with the pattern of foam under an oar on the Rio Negro on the eve of the battle of Quebracho... These memories were not easy - each visual image was accompanied by muscle, thermal, etc. sensations. He could restore all his dreams, all his fantasies. Two or three times he recalled the entire day. He told me: “I alone have more memories than all the people in the world have had since the world stood.” And again: “My dreams are the same as your waking hours... my memory, sir, is like a gutter...” “Funes, miracle of memory” by Jorge Luis Borges

— fixation amnesia- loss of memory for current events.

fixation amnesia - a companion to dementia

2 localized amnesia(limited) - a type of amnesia with a certain time period for which memory is lost.

Localized amnesia

The unique case of Henry Gustavus Mollison

— anterograde amnesia- loss of memory for events that occurred after the traumatic incident. For example, a person may not remember the first days when he came out of a coma.

— retrograde amnesia- loss of memory for events that occurred before the traumatic incident.

— congrade amnesia- loss of memory for events that occurred during the period of altered consciousness (coma, oneiroid, delirium tremens, twilight state of consciousness)

— mixed amnesia

— retarded amnesia(delayed) - a certain period of time or events do not fall out of memory immediately, but some time after the painful state. During this period, the patient can tell others about his past painful experiences. After a short time he forgets them completely.

— palimpsest- loss of personal events and details of one’s behavior that occurs during the period of alcohol intoxication. The general course of the event is retained in memory.

Oh, where was I yesterday, I can’t find it for the life of me.
I just remember that the walls are covered with wallpaper,
I remember Klavka and her friend were with her,
I kissed both of them in the kitchen.
And the next morning I got up - let me tell you,
That he scolded the owner, wanted to intimidate everyone,
That I jumped naked, that I screamed songs,
And my father said that I have a general.“Anti-alcohol” Vladimir Vysotsky

3 dissociative amnesia- a type of amnesia based on repression mechanisms.

— selective amnesia- selective memory loss, in which the victim forgets individual events that occurred within a limited period of time. For example, a woman who has lost a child may not remember her child and the events associated with it, but remember neutral parallel events.

— total amnesia- a type of amnesia in which all information relating to the patient’s personality is lost (name, age, place of residence, information about parents and friends, etc.).

II. Qualitative disorders (paramnesia) include:

— pseudoreminiscence- violation of chronology in memory, in which individual events that took place in the past are transferred to the present;

— confabulation- memory deception, in which lapses in memory are replaced by fictitious, non-occurring events.

— cryptomnesia- a memory disorder in which the sources of memories change places. For example, what is seen in a dream, presented in fantasy, read in a book, in a newspaper or on the Internet, seen in a movie, heard from someone is remembered as something that happened to the patient in reality, experienced by him or experienced at a given time in reality, and vice versa. At the same time, the true source of information is often forgotten. For example, a patient who heard that someone was sick with something serious and soon died from this illness, some time later remembers that it was he (or also he) who showed signs of the corresponding illness and it was he who should have died, but fortunately This hasn't happened yet by chance.

— contamination- false reproduction of information, characterized by the combination in an image or concept of parts belonging to different objects.

Feature films in which characters suffer from various forms of memory impairment:

50 First Dates (romance, 2004)
Remembering the beautiful / Se souvenir des belles choses (drama, melodrama, 2001)
The Notebook (drama, romance, 2004)

Enen / N.N. / Enen (drama, thriller; Poland, 2009)

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The Snake Pit (drama, 1948)
Empire of Wolves / L'empire des loups (thriller, 2005)
My jealous hairdresser / Min misunnelige frisør
Wrinkles / Arrugas (cartoon, drama, 2011)
Remember Sunday (drama, melodrama, 2013)
Lost / Un homme perdu / A Lost Man
Before I Go to Sleep (thriller, detective, 2014)
I want to hug you / Dakishimetai: Shinjitsu no monogatari (romance, 2014)
Eric Kandel: In Search of Memory The article was prepared by dr.Freud based on a lecture by Ignatiy Vladimirovich Zhuravlev, candidate of psychological sciences, psychiatrist, senior researcher at the department of neuro- and pathopsychology, faculty of psychology, Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov