Functional amnesia

Is dissociative amnesia different from simple amnesia? Psychology Definition of FUNCTIONAL AMNESIA : a psychiatric disorder with amnesia for autobiographical events. What is organic amnesia? A Heterogeneous Disorder Amnesia. Amnesia is an impairment of the mind characterized by the loss of memory.

The DSM IV categorizes dissociative amnesia according to Pierre Janet’s general classification.

Analyses of learning and memory increasingly attempt to take account of clinical and experimental research on victims of amnesia. Most of this literature has focused on pathologies of memory associated with demonstrable brain lesions or the administration of centrally acting drugs. In functional amnesia , there is an inhibition by a subconscious mechanism, which attacks, not directly the function of thinking again the past experience, but the specific striving which was at. This nonneurological syndrome is variously referred to as psychogenic amnesia , hysterical amnesia , dissociative amnesia , and functional retrograde amnesia. Psychogenic amnesia or dissociative amnesia , is a memory disorder characterized by sudden retrograde episodic memory loss, said to occur for a period of time ranging from hours to years.

The present study was designed to elucidate whether factors of encoding (attention), storage (consolidation), retrieval (reconstruction), or combinations of these are responsible for amnesia due to exposure to psychologically traumatic events. One major category of functional amnesia occurs within. Functional amnesia as induced by a psychological trauma.

Nonpathological Amnesias. In other forms of functional amnesia ,. Explicit and Implicit Memory. While the functional amnesias by definition impair explicit memory,.

However, dissociative disorder is a broad term that is used for a kind of mental illness that is characterized by escaping reality in ways that are involuntary and unhealthy. We carried out the first neuropsychological study of a series of patients with functional amnesia. We evaluated patients, first with a neurological examination and then with three tests of anterograde amnesia and four tests of retrograde amnesia. Excluding one patient who later admitted to malingering,all patients had a significant premorbid psychiatric history and one or more possible precipitating factors for their amnesia. Eight of the patients still had persistent retrograde amnesia at our last contact with them (median = mo after the onset of amnesia ). Although no particular brain structure or brain system is implicated in functional amnesia , the cause of the disorder must be due to abnormal brain function of some kind.

This type of damage can result from a traumatic injury, a serious illness, a seizure or stroke, or a degenerative brain disease. ABPP(CN),and Wilfred G. Other signs and symptoms that may be an indication of functional amnesia are: Other mental health problems that involve depression and anxiety. A blurred sense of identity.

De-realization (a perception of people and things around you as being distorted and unreal). Initially seen as the antipode of so-called “organic” amnesia, the use of the term functional amnesia shifted to designate amnesic disorders that occur without evidence of significant brain damage as detected by conventional structural brain imaging techniques and have an unsure etiology. Retrograde amnesia is described as condition which can occur after direct brain damage, but which occurs more frequently as a result of a psychiatric illness.

Organic causes include damage to the brain, through trauma or disease, or use of certain (generally sedative) drugs.

Some research has suggested that organic and psychogenic amnesia to some extent share the involvement of the same structures of the temporo-frontal region in the brain. Memory abnormality - Memory abnormality - Psychogenic amnesia : Some forms of amnesia appear to be quite different from those associated with detectable injury or disease of the brain. Unlike anterograde amnesia , it is the loss of memories of past events. Some people with amnesia have difficulty forming new memories.

Others can’t recall facts or past experiences. People with amnesia usually retain knowledge of their own identity, as well as motor skills. Mild memory loss is a normal part of aging.