The Half Remembrance of Things

Amnesia disrupts the brain’s ability to form entire memories

It is the brain’s inability to form complete memories more than forgetting that causes memory problems in diseases like dementia, according to a study conducted by the University of Cambridge, published in Science. Memory difficulties are usually seen as the result of forgetting.

Using an animal model of amnesia, the study found that the brain’s ability to maintain entire memories in detail is disrupted. As a result, the memories that form often lead to confusion, and increase the likelihood of remembering events that did not take place.

“This is consistent with reports of memory distortions in dementia—for example, patients may not switch off the cooker, or may fail to take their medication, not because they have forgotten that they should do these things, but because they think they have already done so,” says Dr Lisa Saksida from the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Cambridge.

Previously, it was found that amnesic animals could not distinguish between a new and an old object. However, it was unverified whether the animal was unable to distinguish between them because it saw the old object as being new (it had forgotten something that occurred), or because it saw the new object as being old (false memory).

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