Memory - independent mental function, type of mental activity aimed at preserving (storing), the accumulation and subsequent reproduction of the information received from the outside. Any violation of memory, whatever the reasons they were not called, are always associated with partial or complete inability to use the information stored in normal activities. Memory disorders are so many: they can be classified and which caused memory impairment reasons and on the specifics of memory, and the nature of changes in memory function.
Types of memory disorders
In general, decided to allocate three types of memory disorders: gipomneziya (memory loss), hypermnesia ("strengthening" of memory abnormally sharpened ability to remember information of any kind), paramnesia (mixing real memories from false memories, often accompanied by mixing the real and imaginary). One of the characteristic species is gipomnezii amnesia - a set of memory disorders characterized by partial or complete absence of memories.
In addition, there is a classification of memory disorders in terms of the nature of the memorized information: the so-called non-specific modal and modal-specific memory disorders. Modal-non-specific disorders of memory - memory impairment is of a general nature, the inability to memorize information of any kind due to any reason. In turn, the modal-specific memory disorders - a partial memory disorders, which are characterized by an inability to remember information received specific receptors (eg, visual disorders, auditory-speech, motor memory, and so on).
Causes of memory disorders
Partial or complete inability to remember, store and play back the memories stored in the consciousness of the information may be caused by a variety of reasons. Among the main causes of memory disorders:
- Stress - emotional or mental fatigue that violates a person's ability to remember information. Along with stress
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significant negative impact on a person's ability to remember affect depression
Depression - a little more than a bad mood
and anxiety disorders.
- Head injuries - because the brain "responsible" for the storage, processing and reproduction of the information received, any physical damage to any parts of the brain can cause memory loss. Memory disorders severity depends on the degree of brain damage (severe head trauma can lead to permanent impairment of memory). In addition, the "culprit" memory disorders can be a brain tumor.
- Dementia (dementia) - a disease associated with impaired cognitive abilities and observed in the elderly. Dementia not only affects the ability to remember, but also to other types of mental abilities - attention, concentration, reasoning ability, and so on. The common representative of this group of diseases - Alzheimer's disease.
- Abuse of alcohol or drugs - is a common cause of memory impairment. In particular, at the end of the nineteenth century Russian scientist Sergey Korsakov described separate memory disorder amid strong alcohol poisoning, get a late self-named "Korsakoff's syndrome."
Amnesia
The most studied to date view of memory disorders - amnesia, memory impairment associated with partial or complete lack of memory. Amnesia can be caused by organic causes, causing other types of memory disorders and psychological reasons. Known examples of such types of amnesia are cases of "crowding out" the memories of any psychological trauma (for example, violence). The two most common types of amnesia - the retrograde and anterograde amnesia. In the first case, memory impairment is the lack of memory of events before the onset of the disease, in the second - inability to remember information that comes after the onset of the disease.
Causes amnesia can be different: trauma, disease, and tumors of the central nervous system toxicity, severe mental stress and so forth. In some cases (for severe mental trauma) all the memories blocked cerebral cortex - the so-called psychogenic amnesia.
Total (generalized) amnesia can manifest itself in the form of impaired ability to learn new information (fixation amnesia), and the memory for the current broken recent events, but saved on past events. This inability to retention of new information (learning) leads to the fact that a person loses the ability to navigate in the environment. This is characteristic of chronic alcoholism.
Another type of generalized amnesia - Progressive amnesia, which is characteristic of senile dementia. At the same time there is a gradual depletion of stocks complete knowledge and skills: first, lost memories of recent events, and then - on the previously acquired knowledge and skills. The longest are stored in the automated movement skills (gait, gestures, etc.).
Impaired memory for a certain period of time after having a variety of disorders of consciousness (fainting, coma, psychotic, and so on), head injury, poisoning, epilepsy and other seizure. They may be completely or partially, when the fall out certain periods of time. Loss of certain memories are often limited to only a period of impaired consciousness (kongradnaya amnesia), but can also apply to events which preceded unconsciousness (retrograde amnesia). These memory disorders can last from several hours to several years, and is often combined with the loss of memories of events that have been at the end of disorders of consciousness (anterograde amnesia).
At a certain period of time may occur and katatimnaya amnesia - a failure in the memory after the traumatic events of the human psyche. In this case, the brain shuts off as if the traumatic event, protecting people from such memories.
Hypermnesia and gipomnezii
Hypermnesia - is worsening memory. It manifests itself in the form of a flood of memories and a sharp increase in their numbers. Memories are usually sensuously shaped and cover both the event itself and its individual parts. There are scenes in the form of, often in varying degrees, chaotic, at least - one involving a complex line. Severe hypermnesia entails an influx of thoughts with a sense that it makes someone else, racing thoughts (ideas emerge one after another, often contradict each other), and other disorders of thinking. Hypermnesia frequently observed in manic-depressive psychosis
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Schizophrenia, in the early stages of alcohol intoxication or marijuana, and so forth.
Gipomnezii (dysmnesia) - a weakening of memory. Gipomnezii most often manifested in the form of uneven lesions of various memory functions, primarily storage and playback of information received. When gipomnezii often significantly impaired memory for current events that may be associated with progressive or fixation amnesia. Memory disorder occurs in a certain sequence. First, recent events are forgotten, then earlier. An early symptom is a violation of election gipomnezii memories that need it at the moment, although later they come up in memory.
In more severe gipomnezii of memories can drop some periods on personal and social life. But the ravages of memory as in progressive amnesia usually does not happen. Gipomneziya may occur when all organic diseases of the central nervous system: after injury, against epilepsy, cardiovascular disease and other brain lesions.
The growing intensity of memory disorders weighting talk about mental illness
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. The treatment of memory disorders should be directed at the underlying disease they caused.
Galina Romanenko
