Types of memory impairment and their symptoms. Memory disorders Severe impairment of the ability to remember

Memory is one of the most important cognitive abilities and higher mental functions (along with sensation, perception and thinking), responsible for the accumulation, preservation and reproduction of individual and social experience, acquired knowledge and skills. The success of the individual and emotional comfort largely depend on it.

The ability to memorize only the necessary information, while filtering out and forgetting all unnecessary and negative is an important quality. Whereas memory disorders can maladjust in society and lead to mental disorders of the individual. Therefore, it is so necessary to prevent such problems, and for this you need to know how to avoid them and what to do when the first signs appear.

Mnemonic disorder, memory impairment is the occurrence of certain difficulties with fixing (memorizing), preserving and reproducing any information from the past.

Classification

There are different types of disorders of this mental function. First of all, these are two large groups, which are divided into many small ones: memory impairments include dysmnesia (quantitative) and paramnesia (qualitative).

Quantitative memory impairment (dysmnesia)

Hypermnesia

A condition in which pathologically accurate memories of many events from the past are preserved to the smallest detail. And everything would be fine, but they have no meaning for the present. In normal development, this is usually forgotten. Why is that bad? First, unnecessary old memories fill up space in the memory store and thus prevent new ones from gaining a foothold. Therefore, with hypermnesia, current information is almost not recorded. Secondly, the logical sequence of events is broken.

Example. After relaxing at sea, not pleasant moments are remembered (beach, bright tropical vegetation, new acquaintances, delicious food, etc.), but such minor nuances as the interior of the hotel room, the clothes of the attendants, flight features, etc. in various pathologies, hypermnesia takes the form of a partial, i.e. selective. In particular, oligophrenics perfectly memorize sequences of numbers, and they do it without any purpose.

Hypomnesia (holey, perforated, perforated memory)

A state in which a person reproduces information from the past only partially. As a rule, he is able to remember only what is constantly repeated in his life and is personally important to him. But historical dates, news, old acquaintances, terms, names - all this is forgotten.

Example. A person accurately reproduces a multi-digit unlock code for a phone, because he does it every day and this is important for him. But he cannot say in what year serfdom was abolished or what was the name of his first teacher.

Amnesia

A condition characterized by the inability to remember a certain period of time. Depending on how long the period falls, several more subspecies are distinguished within this violation:

• - events are forgotten before some traumatic factor (severe stress, traumatic brain injury, etc.), they can cover minutes and years;
• - there are no memories of what happened immediately after the traumatic factor;
• congrade - loss of what is happening during a protracted illness, accompanied by impaired consciousness;
• anteroretrograde (complete, total) - everything is forgotten that is associated with a protracted, serious illness and a traumatic factor, as well as events that occur before that.

Depending on which function is impaired, this disorder is divided into several subspecies:

• - the inability to remember and reproduce information leads to disorientation (a person does not understand where he is, who surrounds him, how he should behave);
• anekphoria - the impossibility of conscious, arbitrary recall without prompting.

Classification depending on the current:

• progressive - an increasing disorder, explained by Ribot's law (see below);
• stationary - persistent memory loss;
• regressive - gradual restoration of forgotten events;
• retarded (delayed) - events are not restored in chronological order, some period may fall out for a long time, and then be remembered many years later.

Ribot's law. The memory of a person with a progressive disorder is like a layer cake, in which the bottom layer is the most distant memories in time (childhood, for example). With such a violation, first the upper layers disappear (that is, what happened quite recently), then events are sequentially forgotten in the direction from the present to the past.

Depending on the object, amnesia happens:

• affective (catatim) - occurs as a result of a traumatic situation, after a strong shock, all the events that accompany a nervous breakdown are forgotten;
• hysterical - the result of a psychopathic syndrome, some individual moments are forgotten;
• scotomization - conscious forgetting of events that hurt, injure;
• palimpsests (alcoholic) - loss of what happened during intoxication.

Qualitative memory disorders (paramnesia)

Pseudo-reminiscences (illusions, false memories)

The line between past and present is blurred. A person experiences what happened a long time ago, as if it is happening now and has meaning for him.

Confabulations (delusions of the imagination, fiction, hallucinations)

In fact, these are false memories: a person is convinced that certain events happened in his life, while in fact they did not exist. Confabulations are classified into several subspecies:

• mnestic and replacing - due to memory loss and being a replacement for what is forgotten;
• fantastic - associated with dementia and a rich imagination.

Example. A person suffering from confabulation can “recognize” a person who is completely unfamiliar to him, at the same time he will sincerely express his delight from the long-awaited meeting and even tell in detail the moments allegedly experienced together with him. Often the behavior of such people is accompanied by fussiness, speech disorders, lack of logic in thinking.

Confabulosis

A more harmless variety of confabulation. There are no psychophysical disorders. However, by chance, during a conversation, false memories may come to light.

Cryptomnesia

Patients begin to appropriate other people's memories. If, for example, some story has sunk into their souls, they will continue to tell it to those around them as if it happened to them personally. And it can be a story of a friend, the plot of a book or a movie. The most painful form of cryptomnesia is pathological plagiarism, when a person claims to be the author of a completely different masterpiece.

Echomnesia (Pick's reduplicating paramnesia)

Strong feelings, worries, anxieties, emotions experienced once, are perceived by the sufferer with triple strength. He can relive them over and over again, superimposing them on his real life. For example, sometime in the past, parting with a loved one happened with a scandal and breaking dishes. In each subsequent relationship, if they end, the person suffering from echomnesia will try to reproduce the same situation - he will definitely provoke a quarrel and smash something to smithereens.

Phenomena allegedly already seen and heard

One of the most common violations. This is the confidence that the events that have taken place have already taken place, but when exactly - no one can say. This feeling is played up in many films and exorcisms. It is believed that this is how genetic memory manifests itself, telling us about what happened in a past life. This also includes radically opposite disorders, when something that has already happened more than once is perceived as a new experience. There are several varieties:

• jame vu - the feeling when something well known seems completely unknown, as if seen for the first time;
• deja veku - a mental state when the first experienced events seem to be known;
• deja antandyu - a mental disorder when the sounds heard for the first time seem familiar for a long time;
• jame antandyu - a mental disorder when familiar sounds (even one's own voice) are perceived as first heard;
• jame syu - the inability to reproduce previously well-learned knowledge (for example, a verse learned the day before).

Often in psychology they use the classification proposed by A. R. Luria. It is based on pathogenetic mechanisms:

• modal-nonspecific disorders - caused by damage to deep brain structures: auditory, visual, motor analyzers;
• modal-specific - provoked by damage to the cortical zones of the analyzers: acoustic, auditory, visual-spatial, motor;
• system-specific - due to damage to speech analyzers.

So memory impairment syndromes are quite widely represented in psychology. Each of them requires careful diagnosis and a separate approach to correction.

Reasons for violation

Physiological:

• asthenic syndrome;
• organic diseases of the central nervous system, degenerative processes in it, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's chorea;
• mental pathologies: dementia, epilepsy;
• mental retardation;
• alcoholism, drug addiction;
• damage to brain structures, traumatic brain injury, cerebrovascular accident, atherosclerosis, stroke, hypertension;
• toxic damage to the liver;
• hypovitaminosis.

Psycho-emotional reasons:

Wrong lifestyle:

• unbalanced diet;
• insufficient sleep;
• improper distribution of time between work and rest;
• no daily routine.

Scientifically proven. German neuroscientists from the Ruhr University (Germany) found out that depression deforms memory and causes its persistent impairment.

Symptoms

General symptoms for most species:

• confusion;
• forgetfulness;
• inability to recall past events or memorized information;
• confusion;
• autism, rigidity of the nervous system.

If the violations are caused by some somatic or mental illness, they are accompanied by symptoms characteristic of them.

Often there is an overlap of violations of various higher mental functions, which is also manifested by various deviations. For example, memory impairments and...

• ... thinking: if a person does not have high mental abilities, it is difficult for him to remember information, this is especially evident in dementia and mental retardation, when obvious memory problems are diagnosed;
• ... attention: unstable, slow or insufficient concentration leads to the fact that information is not remembered.

It must be borne in mind that each individual disorder is characterized by a specific clinical picture.

Features of the flow

Psychological

Short-term memory impairment (STL)

In psychology, short-term memory is called, which has an insignificant volume and is able to retain images for a short time - no more than 3 days. After that, the information is subject to processing and passes into the possession of long-term memory. Plays an important role in memory. When it is violated, the events of the present are poorly recorded. The sufferer cannot learn a quatrain or remember the routine of his own day. The main reasons are undeveloped intellect, stressful situations, overwork, depression, intoxication of the body (alcohol, for example).

Mediated memory disorders

To improve memory, experts often recommend training its mediated form. For example, to memorize a certain event, some kind of "anchor" is reproduced - a smell, an image, a code word, a taste, etc. This technique can be used when learning a foreign language (associate memorized words with Russian ones). In some mental pathologies, mediated memory is impaired, and the patient cannot reproduce the intermediate link that would help him remember everything else. Most often this is observed in schizophrenia and rigidity of emotional attitudes.

Violation of the motivational component of memory

It is believed that incomplete actions are remembered better than completed ones. This is due to the motivational component of memory. If a person knows that he has finished some business, he no longer sees the point in returning to it. If the task remains unresolved, it will constantly pop up in thoughts and require completion to the end. If this component is violated, the patient never brings the tasks assigned to him to their logical conclusion, because he simply forgets about them. This leads to social maladjustment, as others begin to consider him irresponsible and frivolous.

Pseudoamnesia

Some experts refer to pseudoamnesia as a memory disorder, while others consider it to be a mental disorder of mnestic activity. The reason is extensive damage to the frontal lobes of the brain. Involuntary memory works, while arbitrary memory is non-functional.

Example. A person suffering from pseudo-amnesia is given the task of memorizing as many words as possible by ear. Of the ten spoken, he will be able to reproduce no more than 3. However, if you give him pictures that depict what was just spoken, he will recognize a much larger number than he reproduced earlier.

Age

In children

Mnemonic disorders in a child can most often be caused by two factors: serious somatic diseases (after trauma, with mental retardation or schizophrenia) or disorders in thinking and attention. Sometimes the cause is pedagogical neglect, if it was not developed in accordance with age. Usually, violations are already detected in younger students: against the background of classmates, such children cannot reproduce poems by heart, do not know how to retell, are not able to concentrate on the lesson, and have low intelligence.

The success of the correction directly depends on the causes. For example, psychotraumatic factors are removed with the help of psychotherapists, somatic - through therapeutic treatment, pedagogical - developmental programs.

During adolescence and middle age

Memory impairment during this period occurs, as a rule, due to acquired diseases and injuries. And with age, they can become more and more inconsistent. That is, during prolonged depression and excessive stress, they become aggravated (short-term memory suffers first of all), and after recovery everything returns to normal.

In old age

Over time, the nervous system and brain undergo natural aging processes. They gradually atrophy, the number of neurons decreases, the connections between them weaken. This becomes the main cause of mnemonic disorders in the elderly. However, if you lead a healthy lifestyle and, if possible, avoid traumatic factors, this moment can be delayed.

Fact. The main violations occur at the age after the turn of 50 years.

Pathological

In a number of diseases, the most persistent and frequent disorders are diagnosed:

• in schizophrenia, such types of disorders as hypermnesia, anecphoria, pseudo-reminiscences, fixative and progressive amnesia develop;
• with epilepsy and after a stroke - anteroretrograde;
• with TBI - retrograde and anteroretrograde.

Experts also note other diseases associated with memory impairment.

Quantitative disorders can be associated with the following pathologies and conditions:

• oligophrenia, manic syndrome, drug addiction - hypermnesia;
• neurotic disorders, major drug addiction, psychoorganic, paralytic syndromes - hypomnesia;
• hypoxia - retrograde memory loss;
• Korsakovsky non-alcoholic psychosis, amental syndrome - anterograde;
• stunning, stupor, coma, delirium, oneiroid syndrome - congrade;
• coma, amental syndrome, toxic brain damage, stroke - anteroretrograde;
• Korsakov's non-alcoholic psychosis, dementia, paralytic syndrome - fixative;
• chronic fatigue syndrome, psychoorganic syndrome, lacunar dementia - anekphoria;
• dementia, Pick's disease and Alzheimer's - progressive;
• psychogenic disorders - affective;
• hysterical, psychopathic syndrome - hysterical;
• alcoholism - palimpsests.

Qualitative disorders are most often associated with diseases such as:

• Korsakov's non-alcoholic psychosis, dementia - pseudo-reminiscences;
• Korsakovsky non-alcoholic psychosis - confabulosis;
• psychoorganic and paranoid syndromes - cryptomnesia;
• psychoorganic syndrome - echomnesia;
• depersonalization and derealization personality disorders are phenomena of what has already been seen and heard.

Diagnostics

To diagnose memory disorders, various methods are used:

• collection of anamnesis;
• electroencephalogram (EEG);
• computed tomography (CT);
• magnetic resonance imaging (MRI);
• general tests and ultrasound diagnostics to identify a somatic disease that caused violations.

Psychological tests have remained the main diagnostic method for many years:

• to identify violations in the KVP;
• pictograms;
• method 10 words;
• textology and many others.

In each individual case, the specialist himself decides which methods to use to make a more accurate diagnosis.

Treatment

Treatment and correction of memory impairments entirely depend on the cause of their occurrence. Therefore, in the first place, the provocateur factor is identified and all measures are taken to eliminate it. Usually a therapeutic course is prescribed. If there is a full recovery, all gaps are restored. If we are talking about an incurable disease, the patient with these problems will have to live until the end of his days.

Psychiatry deals with serious disorders that cannot be corrected without drug therapy. Most often, such patients are prescribed the following drugs:

• nootropics (Piracetam, Lucetam, Nootropil);
• energy metabolism substrates (glutamic acid);
• herbal remedies (Bilobil, Eleutherococcus).

These drugs are available without a prescription, so they are often used in self-medication to increase concentration and performance. However, experts warn that this can have dangerous health consequences.

Did you know that... Are mnemonic disorders treated with hypnotherapy? Scientists still can’t fully understand how it works, but good sleep can significantly improve the condition of patients.

In psychology, correction is carried out using:

• individual and group trainings;
• exercises to train attention, thinking and memory;
• various mnemonics;
• creating semantic phrases from the first letters;
• rhyming;
• method of Cicero (based on spatial imagination);
• Aivazovsky method (based on visual memory);
• psychological and pedagogical correctional influence.

Suddenly. The famous phrase "Every hunter wants to know where the pheasant sits" for remembering the sequence of colors in the rainbow is the simplest mnemonic.

Pathopsychology achieves good results in correction. This is a practical branch of clinical psychology that studies any pathology in comparison with the norm. By constantly returning the patient to the starting point of memories, they manage to partially restore the gaps.

1. Lead an active lifestyle, play sports.
2. More to be in the fresh air (to improve cerebral circulation).
3. Be intellectually active: read books, follow the news, solve crossword puzzles, knit, play chess.
4. Communicate as much as possible with people, make new acquaintances.
5. Follow the daily routine. Get enough sleep.
6. Avoid stress, overwork, excessive loads.
7. Follow a balanced diet and drinking regimen.

Useful advice. Experts believe that aromatherapy helps to restore and correct various memory disorders. In particular, regular inhalation of rosemary aroma allows to improve long-term.

Memory is the most important component of the life of any person. The slightest violations in its work are fraught with serious complications. It can be constantly trained and improved with the help of mnemonics and special exercises, without waiting for age-related problems to arise. But most often people forget about it, which sooner or later leads to various kinds of disorders that cannot always be corrected and treated.

- this is a decrease or complete loss of the function of registering, storing and reproducing information. With hypomnesia, disorders are characterized by a weakening of the ability to remember current and reproduce past events. Amnesia is manifested by the absolute inability to store and use information. With paramnesia, memories are distorted and distorted - the patient confuses the chronology of events, replaces the forgotten with fiction, plots from books and television programs. Diagnosis is carried out by the method of conversation, special pathopsychological tests. Treatment includes taking medications, psycho-corrective classes.

ICD-10

R41.1 R41.2 R41.3

General information

Memory is a key mental process that provides the possibility of accumulating and transferring experience, learning about the world around us and one's own personality, and adapting to changing conditions. Complaints about memory loss are most common among neurological and psychiatric patients. Disorders of this group are regularly detected in 25-30% of young and middle-aged people, in 70% of the elderly. The severity of disorders varies from minor functional fluctuations to stable and progressive symptoms that prevent social and household adaptation. In the age group of 20-40 years, astheno-neurotic syndromes, which are reversible, prevail; in patients older than 50 years, memory impairment is often due to organic changes in the brain, leading to persistent cognitive deficits and difficult to treat.

The reasons

Memory problems can be caused by many factors. The most common cause is asthenic syndromecaused by daily psycho-emotional stress, increased anxiety, and physical ailment. The pathological basis of a pronounced decrease in memory functions is organic diseases of the central nervous system and mental pathologies. The most common causes of mental disorders include:

• Overwork. Excessive physical, mental and emotional stress becomes a source of stress and functional decline in cognitive processes. The likelihood of memory impairment is higher with an unbalanced diet, lack of sleep, wakefulness at night.
• Somatic diseases. Physical ailments contribute to the development of general exhaustion. Difficulties in memorization are caused by both asthenization and a shift in attention from information coming from outside to sensations in the body.
• Bad habits. Memory is weakened against the background of brain damage, toxic liver damage, hypovitaminosis. With prolonged alcohol dependence and drug addiction, a persistent cognitive deficit develops.
• Cerebral circulation disorders. The cause may be spasm or atherosclerosis of cerebral vessels, stroke and other age-related disorders. Patients with hypertension are at risk.
• Traumatic brain injury. Memory is impaired in the acute and remote period of TBI. The severity of the disorders ranges from mild difficulty in memorizing new material to the sudden loss of all accumulated knowledge (including first name, last name, faces of relatives).
• Degenerative processes in the central nervous system. During normal aging, the brain undergoes involutional changes - the volume of tissues, the number of cells, and the level of metabolism decrease. There is a weakening of memory and other cognitive functions. Severe persistent dysfunction is accompanied by degenerative diseases (Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's chorea, etc.).
• Mental disorders. A cognitive defect is formed in various dementias, schizophrenia. Epilepsy, being a neurological disease, affects the psyche, including causing memory changes.
• Mental retardation. It may be associated with genetic pathologies, complications during pregnancy and childbirth. Mnestic disorders are most pronounced in moderate and severe forms of oligophrenia.

Pathogenesis

Memory processes are implemented with the participation of modal-specific centers of the cortex, where information from the analyzers arrives, and non-specific structures - the hippocampus, thalamus, cingulate gyrus. Specific (according to the modality of analyzers) cortical sections interact with speech zones, as a result of which memory moves to a more complex level of organization - it becomes verbal-logical. The selectivity of memory is provided by the activity of the frontal lobes, and the general ability to memorize and reproduce is provided by the stem sections and the reticular formation.

Memory disorders are characterized by dysfunction of brain structures. With a decrease in tone, diffuse organic processes and damage to the subcortical-stem sections, all types of mnestic processes worsen: fixation, retention and reproduction. The localization of the focus in the frontal zones affects the selectivity and focus of memorization. The pathology of the hippocampus is manifested by a decrease in long-term memory, a violation of the processing and storage of spatial information (disorientation).

Classification

Taking into account the peculiarities of the clinical picture, memory disorders are divided into hypermnesia (increase), hypomnesia (decrease), amnesia (absence) and various subtypes of paramnesia - qualitative changes in stored information. A classification focused on pathogenetic mechanisms was developed by Alexander Romanovich Luria and includes the following types of disorders:

• Modally non-specific. Manifested by defective preservation of traces of influences of various modalities (auditory, visual, motor). The disorders are caused by damage to deep non-specific brain structures, pathologically increased inhibition of traces. An example is Korsakov's syndrome in alcohol poisoning.
• Modal-specific. Problems arise when saving, reproducing information of a certain modality. Disorders develop on the basis of lesions of the cortical zones of the analyzers, the inhibition of traces is the result of interfering influences. Acoustic, auditory-speech, visual-spatial, motor memory can be pathologically changed.
• System specific. Pathologies of this group are caused by damage to the speech areas of the brain. It is impossible to systematize, organize incoming information with the help of semantic verbal processing.

Symptoms of memory disorders

Hypomnesia is a decrease in the ability to store, remember, reproduce information. Manifested by a deterioration in memory for names, addresses, dates and events. It is especially noticeable in conditions that require a quick formulation of the answer. The mnestic deficit is associated mainly with the events of the present, information from the past becomes poorer in details, the sequence, sequence, and timing are forgotten. As a rule, the patients themselves are the first to notice the disorder. When reading a book, they need to periodically return to the previous paragraph in order to reconstruct the plot. To compensate for hypomnesia, they start diaries, gliders, use stickers and alarm clocks with reminders.

Amnesia is a complete loss of memory. With the retrograde form, memories of events immediately preceding the disease are lost. Information about life falls out within a few days, months or years. The earlier memories are preserved. Anterograde amnesia is characterized by a loss of information about situations that occurred after an acute period of illness or injury. Patients cannot remember what happened to them during the last few hours, days or weeks. With fixative amnesia, the ability to remember current information is lost.

The progressive form is manifested by the destruction of the memorization skill and the increasing depletion of information reserves. At first, patients forget situations and information received recently. Then the events of the distant past are erased from memory. In the end, information about the entire life lived is lost, including one's own name, faces of loved ones, episodes from youth and childhood. With selective, affectogenic, hysterical forms, memories of individual periods are erased - traumatic situations, negative experiences.

Qualitative memory disorders are called paramnesias. These include confabulation, cryptomnesia, and echomnesia. With confabulations, patients forget the events that actually happened, inadvertently replacing them with fictions. Fantasies of patients may seem very plausible, associated with domestic, everyday situations. Sometimes they are in the nature of fantastic, unreal - with the participation of aliens, angels, demons, with mystical reincarnations of actors. Elderly patients are characterized by ekmnestic confabulations - the replacement of forgotten periods of life with information from childhood and adolescence. With cryptomnesia, patients consider the events described in books, seen in dreams, films or television programs to be really experienced in the past. Echomnesia is the perception of ongoing situations as having taken place before, recurring. There is a false memory.

Complications

Severe and gross memory impairments that develop with a long course of the disease and the absence of therapeutic and rehabilitation measures lead to the disintegration of complex motor skills. Such states are often accompanied by a general intellectual deficit. Initially, patients experience difficulty in writing, reading, and counting. Gradually, problems arise in spatial orientation, time planning, which makes it difficult to move independently outside the home, and reduces social activity. In the later stages, patients lose their speech and household skills, cannot eat on their own, perform hygiene procedures.

Diagnostics

The primary study of memory disorders is performed by the clinical method. A psychiatrist and a neurologist collect an anamnesis, conduct a conversation, according to the results of which they evaluate the safety of cognitive functions and the severity of impairments, receive information about concomitant diseases, previous neuroinfections and traumatic brain injuries. To identify the causes of memory changes, the neurologist, if necessary, directs the patient to MRI of the brain, EEG, duplex scanning of the brachiocephalic arteries, examination of the cerebrospinal fluid, examination of the fundus. Specific diagnosis of memory disorders is carried out by a pathopsychologist, and if a local brain lesion is suspected, by a neuropsychologist. Several types of memory are tested:

• Mechanical. The “10 words” technique is used, memorizing syllables, memorizing two rows of words. Tests reveal fluctuations in the dynamics of mental activity, exhaustion. The result is presented in the form of a curve. It has the character of a steadily reduced plateau in dementias, it can be normally high in mild oligophrenia, zigzag in vascular pathologies, post-infectious and post-toxic conditions, in the separated period of TBI.
• Semantic. Samples are used to retell the content of texts of varying complexity. A decrease in the result indicates a violation of complex forms of memory due to abstract thinking and speech. With the relative safety of mechanical memorization, semantic memory is impaired in oligophrenia and epilepsy. The results remain normal for a long time in people with vascular diseases, asthenic syndrome.
• mediated. The ability of the subject to memorize the material with the help of an intermediate symbol is being studied. Diagnostic tools - "pictograms", Vygotsky-Leontiev method of indirect memorization research, double stimulation method. The introduction of an intermediate stimulus makes it difficult to complete the task in schizophrenia due to a decrease in focus, in epilepsy due to the torpidity and inertness of mental processes, “getting stuck” on details.
• figurative. The test is in demand when examining children with undeveloped speech and patients with gross speech defects. Sets of images of objects, people, animals are used. The technique is aimed at assessing the ability to memorize the material, its retention over a period of several minutes to an hour. The result is used to distinguish between total and partial cognitive defect.

Treatment of memory disorders

Therapeutic and corrective measures are selected individually and are largely determined by the cause - the leading disease. In case of asthenic syndrome, it is necessary to restore the normal mode of rest and work, in case of memory deterioration due to alcohol intoxication, hepatic diseases - to follow a diet, in case of hypertension - to maintain normal blood pressure. Common treatments for memory disorders include:

• Medical therapy. Various groups of drugs are used to eliminate the primary disease. There are also special drugs (nootropics) that stimulate cognitive processes by improving blood circulation and metabolic processes in the brain. This group includes energy metabolism substrates (provide nerve cells with energy), classic nootropics (normalize metabolic processes) and herbal remedies (support metabolism).
• Psychocorrection. To train and restore memory, mnemonics are actively used - special techniques that facilitate the process of memorizing information, increasing the amount of stored material. Compensatory mechanisms are activated, bright visual and sound images, strong and unusual sensations are used as auxiliary means. Basic techniques - the creation of semantic phrases from the first letters, rhyming, Cicero's method (spatial imagination), Aivazovsky's method.
• Leading a healthy lifestyle. Patients are shown daily walks in the fresh air, moderate physical activity, active communication, good sleep. These simple activities improve cerebral circulation, ensure the regular flow of new information that needs to be comprehended and memorized. Patients are recommended regular intellectual workload, it is useful to read high-quality literature, watch and discuss popular science TV shows, documentaries (retell, analyze, draw conclusions).

Forecast and prevention

Memory disorders can be successfully treated in the absence of a progressive underlying disease (senile dementia, an unfavorable form of schizophrenia, epilepsy with frequent seizures). The leading role in the prevention of memory impairment belongs to maintaining health, including quitting smoking and alcohol abuse, playing sports, timely seeking medical help for somatic and mental illnesses. It is important to observe a rational mode of work and rest, sleep at least 7-8 hours a day, devote time to intellectual stress, reading books, solving crossword puzzles, applying the information received in life.

Memory impairment is a pathological condition characterized by the inability to fully remember and use the information received. According to statistics, about a quarter of the world's population suffers from various degrees of memory impairment. The most pronounced and most often this problem is faced by older people, they can experience both episodic memory impairment and permanent ones.

Causes of memory impairment

There are quite a lot of factors and reasons that affect the quality of assimilation of information, and they are not always associated with disorders caused by age-related changes. The main reasons include:

Memory impairment in the elderly

Complete or partial memory loss accompanies 50 to 75% of all elderly people. The most common cause of such a problem is the deterioration of blood circulation in the vessels of the brain, caused by age-related changes. In addition, in the process of structure, changes affect all structures of the body, including metabolic functions in neurons, on which the ability to perceive information directly depends. Also, memory impairment in old age can be the cause of a serious pathology, such as Alzheimer's disease.

Symptoms in older people begin with forgetfulness. Further, there are problems with short-term memory, when a person forgets the events that have just happened to him. Such conditions often lead to depressive states, fears and self-doubt.

In the normal aging process of the body, even in extreme old age, memory loss does not occur to such an extent that it could affect the normal rhythm. The memory function decreases very slowly and does not lead to its complete loss. But in cases where there are pathological abnormalities in the functioning of the brain, older people may suffer from such a problem. In this case, supportive treatment is required, otherwise the condition may develop into senile dementia, as a result of which the patient loses the ability to remember even the elementary data necessary in everyday life.

It is possible to slow down the process of memory deterioration, but this issue should be dealt with in advance, long before old age. The main prevention of dementia in old age is mental work and a healthy lifestyle.

Children's disorders

Not only the elderly, but also children can face the problem of memory impairment. This may be due to deviations, often mental, that arose even in the fetal period. An important role in congenital memory problems is influenced by genetic diseases, in particular Down syndrome.

In addition to a birth defect, there may be acquired disorders. They are caused by:

Short term memory problems

Our memory consists of short-term and long-term. Short-term allows us to assimilate the information that we receive at the moment, such a process lasts from a few seconds to a day. Short-term memory has a small amount, therefore, within a short period of time, the brain decides to move the information received to long-term storage or erase it as unnecessary.

For example, information about when you cross the road and look around, you see a silver car moving in your direction. This information is important exactly as long as you have not crossed the road to stop and wait for the car to pass, but after that there is no need for this episode, and the information is erased. Another situation is when you met a person and learned his name and remembered his general appearance. This information will remain in memory for a longer period, how much it will depend on whether you will have to see this person again or not, but it can be stored even with a one-time meeting for years.

Short-term memory is vulnerable and the first suffers from the development of pathological conditions that can affect it. With its violations, the learning ability of a person decreases, forgetfulness and the inability to concentrate on a particular object are observed. At the same time, a person can remember well what happened to him a year or even a decade ago, but cannot remember what he did or what he thought a couple of minutes ago.

Short-term memory lapses are often observed in schizophrenia, senile dementia and the use of drugs or alcohol. But there may be other reasons for this condition, in particular tumors in the brain structures, injuries, and even chronic fatigue syndrome.

Symptoms of memory impairment can develop either instantly, for example, after an injury, or occur gradually as a result of schizophrenia or age-related changes.

memory and schizophrenia

Patients with schizophrenia in their anamnesis have many disorders from the side of disorders of intellectual abilities. Organic lesions of brain structures are absent in schizophrenia, but despite this, dementia develops over the course of the disease, which is accompanied by loss of short-term memory.

In addition, people with schizophrenia have impaired associative memory and the ability to concentrate. It all depends on the form of schizophrenia, in many cases memory is preserved for a long time and its violations occur after years and even decades against the background of developed dementia. An interesting fact is that people with schizophrenia have, as it were, a “double memory”, they may not remember certain memories at all, but, despite this, they clearly remember other episodes from life.

memory and stroke

In the case of a stroke, when a clot clogs the blood vessels of the brain, many suffer
functions. Often, memory lapses and motor and speech disorders are distinguished from the consequences after such a state. After such a state, people can remain paralyzed, the right or left side of the body is taken away, facial expressions are distorted due to atrophy of nerve endings, and much more.

Regarding memory, in the first time after a stroke, there may be complete amnesia for all events that occurred before the onset of the disease. With extensive strokes, total amnesia can be observed, when patients cannot recognize even the people closest to them.

As a rule, despite the seriousness of the pathology, with proper rehabilitation, the patient's memory in most cases returns, almost completely.

Therapeutic actions

Memory loss or deterioration is always a secondary process caused by one or another pathological process. Therefore, in order to prescribe the appropriate treatment, it is necessary to initially identify the cause that led to such consequences and treat it directly. Further correction of memory occurs already against the background of the treatment of the underlying disease. Restoring memory functions requires:

• treatment of the primary disease;
• drug therapy to improve brain activity;
• balanced diet;
• rejection of bad habits;
• performing special exercises aimed at developing memory.

From drug treatment, nootropic drugs are prescribed to improve thinking and brain metabolism. Piracetam is the most commonly used nootropic drug. Of the herbal remedies, bilobil is used, it indirectly affects the metabolism in the brain and, as a rule, is well tolerated.

The diet should be designed in such a way that it contains a sufficient amount of acids, B vitamins, and magnesium.

Note! With any pathological changes, only a doctor should prescribe treatment, uncontrolled intake of nootropic drugs can aggravate the situation.

If you want to keep a good memory for many years and not feel the discomfort associated with excessive forgetfulness even in late old age, it is important to deal with this issue from your youth. By following a healthy lifestyle, watching your diet, getting enough sleep, giving up bad habits and engaging in self-education, you can achieve significant results in improving not only memory, but also thinking, attention and intelligence.

Reading strengthens neural connections:

Memory and memories

Memory disorders are one of the most common disorders that significantly impair a person's quality of life. There are two main types of them - quantitative disorders, which are manifested in the loss, weakening or strengthening of memory traces, and qualitative disorders (paramnesia), expressed in the appearance of false memories, in a mixture of reality, past, present and imaginary.

Kinds

This symptom manifests itself in the form of the following diseases:

1. Amnesia, which can take various forms, but in general is characterized by a loss of memory for various periods of time, the loss of various information or skills.
2. Hypomnesia - is characterized primarily by a weakening of the ability to reproduce and memorize various reference data - names, numbers, terms and names, i.e. memory functions are affected unevenly.
3. Hypermnesia is, on the contrary, a pathological exacerbation of memory. Often occurs in manic states and the initial stages of alcohol and drug intoxication.
4. Paramnesias are qualitative disorders, they are quite difficult to clearly classify, since the symptoms are quite complex. With these diseases, what is seen, experienced or told for the first time is perceived by a person as something familiar that happened to him before. The illusion of recognition also applies to these disorders.

The reasons

There are actually a lot of reasons for memory loss. This is an asthenic syndrome - anxiety and depression, alcoholism, dementia, chronic diseases, intoxication, lack of trace elements, as well as age-related changes. Below we consider the reasons why such disorders may occur in different age groups of patients.

In children

The main causes of disorders in children are congenital mental retardation and acquired conditions, expressed in hypomnesia - a deterioration in the process of remembering and reproducing information, or amnesia - loss of individual episodes from memory.

Amnesia in children can be a consequence of trauma, mental illness, coma, or poisoning, such as alcohol. However, partial memory impairment in children is most common due to the complex effect of several factors, such as an unfavorable psychological climate in the children's team or in the family, asthenic conditions (including due to frequent acute respiratory viral infections), and hypovitaminosis.

In adults

The reasons why memory impairments can occur in adults are perhaps the most. This is the impact of stressful situations at work and at home, and the presence of all kinds of diseases of the nervous system, such as Parkinson's disease or encephalitis. Of course, alcoholism and drug addiction, mental illnesses - depression, schizophrenia, neuroses lead to such violations.

An important factor that can greatly affect the ability to remember are somatic diseases, during which there is damage to the vessels of the brain and, as a result, a violation of cerebral circulation.

As a rule, during the natural aging process, memory decline occurs rather slowly. At first, it becomes more difficult to remember the events that just happened. Patients during this period may experience fear, depression, self-doubt.

One way or another, 50-75% of people in old age complain about memory impairment. However, as already noted, in most cases this process is slow and does not lead to serious problems or a significant deterioration in the quality of life. However, the process can also take on severe forms, when memory begins to deteriorate rapidly. If in this case you do not resort to treatment, then, as a rule, the patient develops senile dementia.

To determine if a person has problems, various diagnostic methods have been developed. Although it is necessary to understand that all methods are averaged, since people differ greatly in individual characteristics, and it is rather difficult to determine what a “normal” memory is. However, below are a few techniques for checking the memory status.

Diagnosis of visual and auditory memory

For the implementation of the diagnosis, cards are used that depict various objects. In total, 60 cards are required, which will be used in two series - 30 in each.

Each card from the stack is sequentially shown to the patient with an interval of 2 seconds. After showing all 30 cards, it is necessary to take a break of 10 seconds, after which the patient will repeat the images that he managed to remember. Moreover, the latter are allowed to be called in a chaotic order, that is, the sequence is not important. After checking the result, the percentage of correct answers is determined.

Under the same conditions, the patient is shown a second stack of 30 cards. If the results differ greatly, this will indicate poor concentration of attention and unstable mnestic function. If during the test an adult correctly names 18-20 pictures, then he is considered one hundred percent healthy.

The patient's auditory memory is checked in a similar way, only the images on the cards are not shown to him, but are pronounced aloud. A repeated series of words is pronounced on another day. One hundred percent result - the correct indication of 20-22 words.

memorization method

The subject is read a dozen two-syllable words, the semantic connection between which cannot be established. The doctor repeats this sequence from two to four times, after which the subject himself names the words that he can remember. Repeatedly the patient is invited to name the same words in half an hour. Correct and mismatched responses are recorded, after which a conclusion is made about the level of attention of the patient.

There is also a method for memorizing artificial words (for example, roland, whitefish, etc.) that do not carry any semantic load. The patient is read 10 such simple sound combinations, after which the subject repeats the words that he managed to remember. A healthy patient will be able to reproduce all the words without exception after 5-7 repetitions by the doctor.

Prevention

The best prevention of memory loss is a healthy lifestyle. It is also necessary to treat somatic diseases - diabetes, hypertension, etc. in a timely manner and in strict accordance with medical recommendations. It is important for prevention and compliance with the normal mode of work and rest, sufficient sleep - at least 7 hours.

No need to overdo all kinds of diets. You need to understand that about 20% of the energy received by the body with food goes just to meet the needs of the brain. Therefore, a balanced diet must be selected.

Priority should be given to foods made from whole grains, vegetables, oily fish, etc.

It must also be remembered that the water balance of the body also has an extremely negative effect on the nervous system and, accordingly, the risk of memory impairment. Dehydration should not be allowed, for this you need to consume 2 liters of fluid per day.

Most importantly, remember that normal positive communication with friends and relatives, work activity, albeit minimal, maintaining social activity is the key to maintaining a healthy brain until old age.

The doctor's story about the problem in question in the following video:

Memory disorders are one of the complex neuropsychiatric disorders that complicate life. Memory lapses in older people are a natural process of aging. Some disorders are correctable, others are a symptom of a more severe comorbidity.

Memory impairment in psychology

Mental memory disorders are a group of qualitative and quantitative disorders in which a person either stops memorizing, recognizing and reproducing information, or there is a noticeable decrease in these functions. In order to understand how certain disorders affect a person's memorization of information, it is important to understand what memory is. So, memory is the highest mental function that includes a complex of cognitive abilities: memorization, storage, reproduction.

The most common memory disorders are:

• hypomnesia– decrease or weakening;
• paramnesia– errors in memory;
• – event dropout (before or after).

Causes of memory disorder

Why are memory disorders observed? There are many reasons for this, both psychological and pathological, a traumatic effect on a person. Memory impairment - psychological causes:

• psycho-emotional overstrain;
• overwork due to mental or hard physical work;
• a psychotrauma that once occurred that caused a defensive reaction - displacement;

Disorders of memory functions - causes of an organic nature:

• prolonged toxic effects on the brain of alcohol, drugs;
• unfavorable ecology;
• various circulatory disorders (stroke, atherosclerosis, hypertension);
• brain oncology;
• viral infections;
• Alzheimer's disease;
• congenital mental illnesses and genetic mutations.

External influences:

• traumatic brain injury;
• difficult childbirth with the imposition of forceps on the baby's head.

Types of memory impairment

Many people are familiar with the concept of amnesia, because the word itself very often appears in various films or TV shows, where one of the characters loses his memory or pretends not to remember anything, but meanwhile, amnesia is just one type of memory impairment. All types of memory disorders are usually divided into two large groups:

1. quantitative hypermnesia, amnesia, hypomnesia.
2. quality– confabulation, contamination, cryptomnesia, pseudo-reminiscence.

Cognitive memory disorder

Memory refers to the cognitive functions of the human brain. Any violations of memory disorders will be cognitive and leave an imprint on all human thought processes. Cognitive memory disorders are usually divided into 3 types:

• lungs- amenable to medical correction;
• medium- occur earlier than in old age, but are not critical, often associated with other diseases;
• heavy- these disorders occur with general brain damage, for example, as a result of progressive dementia.

Quantitative memory disorders

Memory impairment - dysmnesias (quantitative disorders) are divided into several types by psychiatrists. The largest group is made up of various kinds of amnesia, in which memory loss occurs for a certain period of time. Types of amnesia:

• retrograde- occurs on the events preceding the traumatic, painful situation (for example, the period before the onset of an epileptic seizure);
• anterograde(temporal) - there is a fallout of events after a traumatic situation has occurred, the patient does not remember the period when he got to the hospital;
• fixative- memory impairment, in which current impressions are not remembered, a person at this moment can be completely disoriented in space and after a few seconds all actions in the current moment are forgotten by the patient forever;
• congrade - loss of state memory during delirium, oneiroid, amnesia in this case can be total or fragmentary;
• episodic - it also happens in healthy people when tired, for example, in drivers who are on the road for a long time, when they remember, they can vividly remember the beginning and end of the journey, forgetting what happened in between;
• children's- the inability to remember events that occur before the age of 3 - 4 years (normal);
• intoxication- with alcohol and drug intoxication;
• hysterical(catatim) - exclusion from the memory of traumatic events;
• affective- loss of events occurring during the affect.

Quantitative memory disorders include the following disorders:

• hypomnesia("Hidden memory") - the patient remembers only important events, in healthy people this can be expressed in weakness of memory for dates, names, terms;
• hypermnesia- an increased ability to remember past events that are irrelevant at the moment.

Short-term memory impairment

Psychiatry associates short-term memory disorders with many factors and causes, more often with concomitant diseases and stress factors. Short-term or primary, active memory is an important component of memory in general, its volume is 7 ± 2 units, and the retention of incoming information is 20 seconds, if there is no repetition, the trace of information after 30 seconds becomes very fragile. Short-term memory is very vulnerable, and in amnesia there is a loss of memory of events that happened from 15 seconds to 15 minutes ago.

Memory and speech impairment

Hearing-speech memory is based on the images captured by the auditory analyzer and the memorization of various sounds: music, noise, speech of another person, pronounced memory and speech disorders are characteristic of mentally retarded children and due to damage to the left temporal lobe of the brain during trauma or stroke, which leads to acoustic syndrome. - mnestic aphasia. Oral speech is poorly perceived by patients and out of 4 words spoken aloud reproduces only the first and last (edge ​​effect).

Thinking and memory disorders

All cognitive functions of the brain are interconnected, and if one function is disturbed, over time, others begin to suffer along the chain. Memory and intelligence disorders are observed in Alzheimer's disease, senile dementia. If we consider how a violation occurs, we can cite as an example that a person performs many operations in his mind, which are stored in the form of experience with the help of short-term and long-term memory. With memory impairments, this experience synthesized by memory and thinking is lost.

Memory and attention disorder

All disorders of attention and memory have a negative impact on the memorization of events, situations and information. Types of impaired memory and attention:

• functional- occur when it is impossible to focus on a certain action, which is manifested by a deterioration in memorization, which is typical for ADHD in children, stress;
• organic- with oligophrenia, Down's syndrome, the development of dementia in the elderly.

Memory disorders in brain lesions

With the defeat of different parts of the brain, memory disorders have different clinical manifestations:

• defeat of the hippocampus and the "Peypets circle" - there is a gross amnesia for current everyday events, disorientation in space and time, patients complain that everything falls out of memory, and they are forced to write everything down in order to remember;
• damage to the medial and basal parts of the frontal lobes - characterized by confabulations and memory errors, patients are uncritical of their amnesia;
• local lesions of the convexital departments - a violation of the mnestic function in any particular area;
• memory impairment after a stroke can be verbal (the patient cannot remember the names of objects, names of loved ones), visual - there is no memory for faces and shapes.

Memory impairment in a child

Basically, memory development disorders in children are associated with asthenic syndrome, which together represents high psycho-emotional stress, anxiety and depression. An unfavorable psychological climate, early deprivation, hypovitaminosis are also provoking amnesia in children. Often, children manifest hypomnesia, expressed in poor assimilation of educational material or other information, while along with memory impairment, all cognitive functions suffer.

Memory impairment in the elderly

Senile dementia or senile memory disorder, popularly referred to as senile insanity, is one of the most common memory disorders in the elderly. Dementia is also associated with diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Pick's. In addition to amnesia, the extinction of all thought processes is observed, dementia sets in with the degradation of the personality. Adverse factors in the development of dementia are cardiovascular disease, atherosclerosis.

Symptoms of memory impairment

The symptoms of disorders are varied and depend on the forms in which memory disorders are manifested, in general, the symptoms can be as follows:

• loss of information, skills, both ordinary (brushing teeth) and related to the profession;
• disorientation in time and space;
• stable gaps for the “before” and “after” events;
• palimpsest - loss of individual events when intoxicated;
• confabulation - the replacement of memory gaps with information of a fantastic nature, in which the patient believes.

Diagnosis of memory disorders

The main memory disorders should be diagnosed by a doctor in order not to miss a serious concomitant disease (tumors, dementia, diabetes). Standard diagnostics includes a comprehensive examination:

• blood tests (general, biochemistry, hormones);
• magnetic resonance imaging (MRI);
• computed tomography (CT);
• positron emission tomography (PET).

Psychodiagnostics of memory disorders is based on the methods of A.R. Luria:

1. Learning 10 words. Diagnosis of mechanical memory. The psychologist or psychiatrist slowly calls out 10 words in order and asks the patient to repeat in any order. The procedure is repeated 5 times, and when repeated, the doctor notes how many of the 10 words were correctly named. Normally, after the 3rd repetition, all words are remembered. An hour later, the patient is asked to repeat 10 words (normally 8-10 words should be reproduced).
2. Associative series "words + pictures". Violations of logical memory. The therapist names the words and asks the patient to pick up a picture for each word, for example: a cow - milk, a tree - a forest. An hour later, the patient is presented with pictures with a request to name the words corresponding to the image. The number of words and the complexity-primitiveness in the compilation of the associative series are estimated.