What disease gives gaps in memory. Violation of short-term memory causes. Causes of memory impairment

The main function of the mental activity of the brain is its ability to remember and reproduce learned information at the right time. It is thanks to the properties of memory that a person has memories, experience, knowledge. An individual is able to operate with information without coming into contact with it in real life. must be protected, otherwise various causes can lead to the appearance of symptoms of its violation, which will require serious treatment.

It is unlikely that a person who suffers from memory impairment will be able to note this. Indeed, often a violation of this brain function is accompanied by impaired thinking and even a critical assessment of one's health. That is why the specialists of the website of the psychiatric help site recommend that relatives of the patient contact doctors for help.

Memory impairment can be a consequence of the development of a brain disease, its injury, underdevelopment from birth, or a decrease in the amount of blood flow, which leads to tissue atrophy and insufficiency of the departments. Also, one should not exclude mental illnesses, which often provoke memory impairment, and senile brain diseases with tissue atrophy, which also leads to a decrease in memorization and reproduction of information.

The most well-known forms of memory impairment are:

Loss of short-term or long-term memory.

If the causes that provoked the violation are reversible, then the memory can be restored. However, if the causes are associated with atrophic processes in the brain, then, most likely, the memory will no longer be completely restored.

What is memory impairment?

Memory impairment is the same unpleasant phenomenon as the loss of the full functionality of other areas of the brain. After all, memory is responsible for strengthening, assimilation and reproduction of information. How will a person live if he cannot remember something or his memories disappear altogether? A memory impairment is a symptom in which a person is unable to remember and reproduce specific types of information.

There are two types of memory impairment:

Qualitative - when a person does not remember events, he begins to invent them.
Quantitative - when a person is not able to remember little or a lot of information compared to the natural ability of memory.

There are many reasons for the development of memory impairment. In this regard, in some cases, memory can be restored, but not in others.

For example, many people become forgetful as a result of severe overwork, abuse of drugs or alcohol, long work without rest, absorption of a large amount of information, in a state of illness and even depression. If a person does not feel well, then he becomes less able to remember and even more so reproduce information.

However, there are conditions that can no longer be completely reversed, and the treatment process itself will be very long. So, a well-known form of memory impairment - dementia - is also accompanied by a decrease in mental activity.

Before proceeding to treatment, it is necessary to find out the causes of the development of memory impairment. If a person is healthy at all levels, then he is simply advised to take a break from everyday affairs. If a person has begun to lose memory as a result of depression, then the help of a psychologist is recommended, who will eliminate the cause (the problem that caused depression), and not restore memory (which will be restored as soon as the depression is eliminated).

If the cause of memory impairment is various physiological diseases, then doctors are involved in the treatment. Memory can be restored, or it can remain lost forever.

Causes of memory impairment

There are many reasons for the development of memory impairment:

asthenic condition.
body intoxication.
Depletion of the body.
High anxiety.
Traumatic brain injury.
fatigue.
Depressive state.
Age changes.
Alcoholism.
Micronutrient deficiency.
Circulatory disorders in the brain.
long-term stressors.
Diseases of the nervous system, such as Parkinson's disease or.
neuroses.
Various mental illnesses.

In young children, memory impairment may be due to underdevelopment of the brain or congenital causes. So, hypomnesia (inability to remember and reproduce information) or amnesia (loss of memory of some event or time) may develop. Acquired causes of memory impairment in children are:

Injuries of a mental or physical nature.
Severe poisoning.
Mental illness.
asthenic condition.
Unfavorable environment in the family or children's team.
Hypovitaminosis.

However, already from the first days of life, the baby may experience memory impairment for the following reasons:

Prolonged chronic illness of the mother during pregnancy.
Difficult pregnancy and difficult childbirth.
Birth trauma.

Why do people not remember the events that happen to them after birth, in infancy, in very early childhood? Such "amnesia" occurs at the age of 7 years. At 5-7 years old, a child remembers from 63 to 72% of everything that happens to him at an early age, and at 8-9 years old, only 35% of memories remain. Not everything is erased from a person's memory, but most cannot be reproduced at an older age.

What explains this childhood "amnesia"? hippocampal instability. Until the age of 7, he does not remember information very well. However, after 5-7 years, neurons begin to develop, establish new connections, which is why the old information is lost. We are talking about the fact that the brain forgets everything that was learned in the first years of life and ceases to be used in a later period. That is why a person remembers how to walk, talk, draw, read, if he continues to use these skills at a later age. But the child does not remember the events that happened to him and were not of great importance.

Why this is so conceived by nature, still remains a mystery. Perhaps the psyche protects itself from traumatic events that could happen to the child during this period. Perhaps the need for neurons to establish new connections, which are reinforced by the child's increased learning and acquisition of new knowledge, blocks access to previous information. But all people are faced with the fact that they cannot remember most of their early life, when they were just born and explored the world from a stroller.

Memory functions are affected by human nutrition. It is one thing when a person eats poorly, because of which his body does not receive the necessary trace elements, which leads to memory impairment. Another thing is when a person has diseases of the vascular-cardiac system, because of which blood circulation in the brain is disturbed, which also leads to memory impairment.

Do not forget about the age of the patient. Having crossed the line of 60 years, a person may encounter forgetfulness. It's good if he just forgets some information. But it will be much more difficult for a person to live in society and provide for himself if he develops atrophic processes and other brain diseases. For example, Alzheimer's disease deprives a person not only of memory, but also of personality as a whole.

Iodine deficiency in the body, which enters the thyroid gland, which in turn produces hormones involved in metabolic processes, also contributes to memory impairment. Various thyroid diseases due to iodine deficiency can be easily eliminated by starting to consume foods high in this element.

Symptoms of memory impairment

Memory impairment should not be confused with ordinary forgetfulness and even inattention. In the first case, treatment is required, which often involves taking special medications. In the second case, a person may simply be tired or preoccupied, which can be eliminated, as a result of which the memory will restore its functions again. What are the symptoms of memory impairment?

Memory stores a large amount of different information. Depending on what exactly a person cannot do and what information is not remembered, the following types of violations are distinguished:

Figurative violations - when a person forgets some items.
Motor memory - movements and sequence of actions are forgotten.
Mental memory - pain is not remembered.
Symbolic memory - when a person forgets words, ideas, thoughts.
Short-term memory - the function of the brain suffers, in which a person is able to absorb and retain some information for a short period of time.
Long-term memory - when a person cannot remember what happened to him a long time ago.
Mechanical memory - the ability of a person to remember phenomena and objects as they are in reality is lost, without creating connections between them.
Associative memory - when the ability to build logical connections between objects and phenomena is lost.
Arbitrary memory - when a person is not able to remember what his attention is directed to.
Involuntary memory - when the ability to remember everything is lost without a conscious approach of a person.

Cognitive disorders can be distinguished as follows:

Progressive.
Temporary.
episodic.

Violation of memory leads to the fact that a person is not able to remember, assimilate, forget or reproduce the necessary information at the right time.

Paramnesia is the confusion of memories from different time periods.
Amnesia is the forgetting of an event or a whole period of time. It can be stable or stationary.

Retrograde amnesia is the loss of memory of a situation that preceded the pathology in the brain, due to which memory loss occurred.
Fixation amnesia - when a person is not able to remember and assimilate the surrounding information. He adequately assesses the world around him, he is simply not able to remember what is happening to him.
Total amnesia - when a person forgets absolutely everything that happened to him until now. He even forgets who he is.
Hysterical amnesia - when specific events are forgotten that are unsuitable or unpleasant for a person. It is a protective function of the psyche.

Paramnesia is memory loss with filling in the gaps with other information:

Pseudo-reminiscence is the forgetting of events and their subsequent replacement by other events that actually happened to a person, but in a different period of time.
- forgetting events, followed by filling in the gaps with fictional and even fantastic situations.
Echomnesia - when a person remembers the current information and considers it his past.
Ekmnesiya - when a person returns memories to the past and begins to live them in the present.
Cryptomnesia is forgetting followed by filling in the gaps with information that a person does not remember where he got it from. For example, an event could happen in a dream, and a person thinks that everything was in reality.

Hypermnesia is the influx of memories in large quantities, predominantly of a sensual nature.
Hypomnesia - when a person loses the ability to remember and record current events in part.

Treatment of memory impairment

It is better to prevent memory impairment than to treat it. If the causes of memory impairment can be eliminated, then this should be done. Depending on how easily the causes are eliminated, the faster the memory is restored.

However, if the cause of the memory impairment was changes in the structure of the brain, then, most likely, the memory cannot be restored.

Outcome

If a healthy person suffers from various memory disorders, such as absent-mindedness or forgetfulness, he should eliminate current stresses, fatigue, restore proper nutrition and daily routine. It is also recommended to constantly engage in various exercises to strengthen memory.

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:

increased anxiety;

overwork;

nervousness, irritability, constant mood swings;

regular stressful situations;

depressive states;

traumatic factors;

regular outbursts of negative emotions.

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 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 develop as hypermnesia, anecphoria, pseudo-reminiscences, fixative and progressive amnesia;
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).

Nootropic drugs

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 cannot fully understand how this works, but a 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 memorizing 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.

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

Memory is the mental process of remembering, as well as the preservation and ability to subsequently reproduce past life experience. Memory is the most important adaptation tool. It allows a person for a long time, sometimes for many years, to retain thoughts, past sensations, conclusions, acquired skills. Memory is the main mechanism of the intellect and its support.

Memory disorders most often occur in the presence of organic pathologies and are persistent, sometimes irreversible. Pathologies can be symptomatic, accompanying other areas of the psyche. Temporary memory impairment most often occurs with impaired consciousness.

The main classifications of disorders, memory disorders

Usually they are divided into quantitative (dysmnesia) and qualitative (paramnesia). The first group includes hypermnesia, hypomnesia, various types of amnesia. That is, memory disorders are not only perceived by society in everyday life. The second group includes pseudo-reminiscences, confabulations, cryptomnesia, echomnesia. Let's take a closer look at this classification:

Dysmnesia:

Hypermnesia

It is characterized by involuntary, disorderly actualization of past experience. At the same time, past memories emerge in great detail, interfering with the assimilation of everyday information. The patient is distracted from new impressions, his thinking productivity worsens.

Hypomnesia

The condition is characterized by a significant weakening of memory, and all components suffer. The patient hardly remembers names, dates. A person forgets and cannot remember the main details of past events. People suffering from hypomnesia cannot reproduce information from the recent past. They try to write down simple data that they previously could remember and recall without difficulty. The cause of this pathology is most often vascular diseases of the brain, for example, atherosclerosis.

Forms of amnesia

Amnesia is understood as a collective term denoting a whole group of memory disorders with the loss of some of its parts.

retrograde amnesia

Means a disorder that develops before the onset of the underlying disease. Often found in acute vascular diseases of the brain. It is characterized by the loss of memories of the period of time that immediately precedes the development of the disease.

Congrade amnesia

With it, memory is lost almost completely for the entire period of the disease. it is not so much a consequence of certain memory disorders as it is considered the inability to perceive any information. such a disorder is observed in patients in a coma.

Anterograde amnesia

It develops against the background of events that occurred after an acute period of manifestations of the disease. At the same time, a person is quite accessible to contacts, can quite adequately answer questions. However, after some period of time, he can no longer remember the events that occurred the day before.

Fixation amnesia

This disorder is characterized by a sharp decrease or complete loss of the ability to retain information received in memory. Such people do not remember very recently events, some words. But they remember well what happened before the main disease, and they also retain their professional skills well.

progressive amnesia

This disorder is most often observed with progressive organic brain damage. It is characterized by successive loss of ever deeper layers of memory. In this case, hypomnesia first occurs, then amnesia for recent events is observed, after which the person begins to forget events that have occurred long ago. Organized knowledge, emotional impressions, as well as the simplest automatic skills are the last to be erased from memory.

Paramnesia

These memory disorders include distortions or distortions of the content of past memories.

Pseudoreminescences

Characterized by the replacement of lost memories with others when the events actually happened, but they were in a different time period.

Confabulations

They are observed when memory lapses are replaced by fictional events. They are evidence that a person is losing the ability to critically comprehend the situation, evaluate it. Such patients forget that the events that pop up in their memory never happened, they never happened. Patients are sincerely sure that such fantastic events definitely took place.

Cryptomnesia

A pathological disorder of memory, in which the missing ranks of memories are replaced by fictional events, once read, heard, seen in a dream. In this regard, cryptomnesia is not so much the loss of information itself, but the loss of the ability to determine its source. In this state, patients can sincerely appropriate the creation of any works of art, scientific discoveries.

Echomnesia (Pick's reduplicating paramnesia)

It is characterized by the feeling that what is happening in the present moment has already happened in the past. Such conditions often accompany organic diseases of the brain, especially when the parietotemporal region is affected.

For the treatment of disorders, drugs are used that improve the microcirculation of the brain, restore the metabolism of brain cells, and stimulate active memorization.

Svetlana, www.site

Memory is an important function of our central nervous system to perceive the information received and store it in some invisible "cells" of the brain in reserve in order to retrieve and use it in the future. Memory is one of the most important abilities of a person’s mental activity, therefore the slightest violation of memory burdens him, he gets out of the usual rhythm of life, suffering himself and annoying those around him.

Memory impairment is most often perceived as one of the many clinical manifestations of some kind of neuropsychic or neurological pathology, although in other cases forgetfulness, absent-mindedness and poor memory are the only signs of a disease that no one pays attention to, believing that a person is such by nature. .

The big mystery is human memory

Memory is a complex process that takes place in the central nervous system and involves the perception, accumulation, retention and reproduction of information received at different periods of time. Most of all, we think about the properties of our memory when we need to learn something new. The result of all the efforts made in the learning process depends on how someone manages to hook, hold, perceive what they see, hear or read, which is important when choosing a profession. From the point of view of biology, memory is short-term and long-term.

Information received in a glimpse or, as they say, “it flew into one ear, flew out of the other” is a short-term memory in which what is seen and heard is postponed for several minutes, but, as a rule, without meaning and content. So, the episode flashed by and disappeared. Short-term memory does not promise anything in advance, which is probably good, because otherwise a person would have to store all the information that he does not need at all.

However, with certain efforts of a person, information that has fallen into the zone of short-term memory, if you hold your eyes on it or listen and delve into it, will be transferred to long-term storage. This also happens against the will of a person, if some episodes are often repeated, have a special emotional significance, or occupy a separate place among other phenomena for various reasons.

Assessing their memory, some people claim that they have a short-term memory, because everything is remembered, assimilated, retold in a couple of days, and then just as quickly forgotten. This often happens when preparing for exams, when information is put aside only for the purpose of reproducing it to decorate a grade book. It should be noted that in such cases, turning back to this topic when it becomes interesting, a person can easily restore seemingly lost knowledge. It is one thing to know and forget, and another to not receive information. And here everything is simple - the acquired knowledge without much human effort was transformed into departments of long-term memory.

Long-term memory analyzes, structures, creates volume and purposefully postpones everything for future use indefinitely. Everything is kept in long-term memory. Memorization mechanisms are very complex, but we are so used to them that we perceive them as natural and simple things. However, we note that for the successful implementation of the learning process, in addition to memory, it is important to have attention, that is, to be able to concentrate on the right subjects.

It is common for a person to forget past events after a while, if they do not periodically extract their knowledge in order to use them, therefore, the inability to remember something is not always to be attributed to memory impairment. Each of us has experienced the feeling when "it is spinning in the head, but does not come to mind", but this does not mean that serious disorders have occurred in the memory.

Why do memory lapses happen?

The causes of impaired memory and attention in adults and children may be different. If a child with congenital mental retardation immediately has learning problems, then he will already come to adulthood with these disorders. Children and adults can react differently to the environment: the child's psyche is more tender, so it takes stress harder. In addition, adults have long studied what the child is still trying to master.

Sadly, the trend towards the use of alcoholic beverages and drugs by adolescents, and even by young children left unattended by their parents, has become frightening: cases of poisoning are not so rarely recorded in the reports of law enforcement agencies and medical institutions. But for the child's brain, alcohol is the strongest poison that has an extremely negative effect on memory.

True, some pathological conditions that often cause absent-mindedness and poor memory in adults are usually excluded in children (Alzheimer's disease, atherosclerosis, osteochondrosis).

Causes of memory impairment in children

Thus, the causes of impaired memory and attention in children can be considered:

Lack of vitamins,;
Asthenia;
Frequent viral infections;
Traumatic brain injury;
Stressful situations (dysfunctional family, despotism of parents, problems in the team that the child attends);
Poor eyesight;
Mental disorder;
Poisoning, alcohol and drug use;
Congenital pathology, in which mental retardation is programmed (Down's syndrome, etc.) or other (whatever) conditions (lack of vitamins or trace elements, the use of certain drugs, changes in metabolic processes that are not for the better) that contribute to the formation of attention deficit disorder, which, As you know, memory does not improve.

Causes of problems in adults

In adults, the reason that has become a bad memory, absent-mindedness and inability to concentrate for a long time, are various diseases acquired in the process of life:

Stress, psycho-emotional stress, chronic fatigue of both soul and body;
Acute and chronic;
Discirculatory;
cervical spine;
Traumatic brain injury;
Metabolic disorders;
Hormonal imbalance;
GM tumors;
Mental disorders (depression, schizophrenia and many others).

Of course, anemia of various origins, micronutrient deficiencies, diabetes mellitus and numerous other somatic pathologies lead to impaired memory and attention, contribute to forgetfulness and absent-mindedness.

What are the types of memory disorders? Among them are dysmnesia(hypermnesia, hypomnesia, amnesia) - changes in memory itself, and paramnesia- distortion of memories, to which the patient's personal fantasies are added. By the way, some of them, on the contrary, are considered by others to be rather a phenomenal memory than its violation. True, experts may have a slightly different opinion on this matter.

Dysmnesia

Phenomenal memory or mental disorder?

Hypermnesia- with such a violation, people remember and perceive quickly, information set aside many years ago for no reason pops up in memory, “rolls”, returns to the past, which does not always cause positive emotions. A person himself does not know why he needs to keep everything in his head, however, he can reproduce some long-past events to the smallest detail. For example, an elderly person can easily describe in detail (up to the teacher's clothes) individual lessons at school, retell the lithmontage of a pioneer gathering, it is not difficult for him to remember other details related to studying at the institute, professional activities or family events.

Hypermnesia, present in a healthy person in the absence of other clinical manifestations, is not considered a disease, rather, on the contrary, this is exactly the case when they talk about phenomenal memory, although from the point of view of psychology, phenomenal memory is a slightly different phenomenon. People with this phenomenon are able to memorize and reproduce huge amounts of information that is not connected with any special meaning. These can be large numbers, sets of individual words, lists of objects, notes. Such a memory is often possessed by great writers, musicians, mathematicians and people of other professions that require genius abilities. Meanwhile, hypermnesia in a healthy person who does not belong to the cohort of geniuses, but has a high intelligence quotient (IQ), is not such a rare occurrence.

As one of the symptoms of pathological conditions, memory impairment in the form of hypermnesia occurs:

With paroxysmal mental disorders (epilepsy);
With intoxication with psychoactive substances (psychotropic drugs, narcotic drugs);
In the case of hypomania - a condition similar to mania, but not up to it in terms of the severity of the course. Patients may experience a surge of energy, increased vitality, and ability to work. With hypomania, a violation of memory and attention is often combined (disinhibition, instability, inability to concentrate).

It is obvious that only a specialist can understand such subtleties, distinguish between the norm and pathology. Most of us are average representatives of the human population, to whom "nothing human is alien", but at the same time they do not turn the world upside down. From time to time (not every year and not in every locality) geniuses appear, they are not always immediately noticeable, because often such individuals are considered simply eccentrics. And, finally, (perhaps not often?) among the various pathological conditions there are mental illnesses that require correction and complex treatment.

bad memory

Hypomnesia- this type is usually expressed in two words: "bad memory."

Forgetfulness, absent-mindedness and poor memory are observed with asthenic syndrome, which, in addition to memory problems, is also characterized by other symptoms:

Increased fatigue.
Nervousness, irritability with or without it, bad mood.
Meteorological dependence.
during the day and insomnia at night.
BP drops, .
Tides and others.
, weakness.

Asthenic syndrome, as a rule, forms another pathology, for example:

Arterial hypertension.
Postponed traumatic brain injury (TBI).
atherosclerotic process.
The initial stage of schizophrenia.

The cause of impaired memory and attention according to the type of hypomnesia can be various depressive conditions (you can’t count everyone), menopausal syndrome that occurs with an adaptation disorder, organic brain damage (severe TBI, epilepsy, tumors). In such situations, as a rule, in addition to hypomnesia, the symptoms listed above are also present.

"I remember here - I don't remember here"

At amnesia not the whole memory falls out, but its individual fragments. As an example of this type of amnesia, one would like to recall the film by Alexander Gray "Gentlemen of Fortune" - "I remember here - I don't remember here."

However, not all amnesias look like in the famous motion picture, there are more serious cases when memory is lost significantly and for a long time or forever, therefore, several types of such memory impairments (amnesia) are distinguished:

A special type of memory loss that cannot be managed is progressive amnesia, representing a sequential loss of memory from the present to the past. The reason for the destruction of memory in such cases is organic atrophy of the brain, which occurs during Alzheimer's disease and . Such patients poorly reproduce traces of memory (speech disorders), for example, they forget the names of household items that they use daily (plate, chair, clock), but at the same time they know what they are intended for (amnestic aphasia). In other cases, the patient simply does not recognize the thing (sensory aphasia) or does not know what it is for (semantic aphasia). However, one should not confuse the habits of “radical” owners to find a use for everything that is in the house, even if it is intended for completely different purposes (you can make a beautiful dish or stand out of a used kitchen clock in the form of a plate).

This is what you need to figure out!

Paramnesia (distortion of memories) also referred to as memory disorders, and among them are the following types:

Confabulation, in which fragments of one’s own memory disappear, and their place is taken by stories invented by the patient and presented to them “in all seriousness”, since he himself believes in what he is talking about. Patients talk about their exploits, unprecedented achievements in life and work, and even sometimes about crimes.
pseudo-reminiscence- the replacement of one memory with another event that actually took place in the patient's life, only at a completely different time and under different circumstances (Korsakov's syndrome).
Cryptomnesia when patients, having received information from various sources (books, movies, stories of other people), pass it off as events they experienced. In a word, patients, due to pathological changes, go to involuntary plagiarism, which is characteristic of delusional ideas found in organic disorders.
Echomnesia- a person feels (quite sincerely) that this event has already happened to him (or did he see it in a dream?). Of course, such thoughts sometimes visit a healthy person, but the difference is that patients attach special significance to such phenomena (“go in cycles”), while healthy people simply quickly forget about it.
Polympsest- this symptom exists in two versions: short-term memory lapses associated with pathological alcohol intoxication (episodes of the past day are confused with long-past events), and the combination of two different events of the same period of time, in the end, the patient himself does not know what happened in fact.

As a rule, these symptoms in pathological conditions are accompanied by other clinical manifestations, therefore, having noticed signs of “déjà vu” in oneself, there is no need to rush to make a diagnosis - this also happens in healthy people.

Decreased concentration affects memory

To violations of memory and attention, the loss of the ability to focus on specific objects include the following pathological conditions:

Attention instability- a person is constantly distracted, jumping from one subject to another (disinhibition syndrome in children, hypomania, hebephrenia - a mental disorder that develops as a form of schizophrenia in adolescence);
Rigidity (slow switching) from one topic to another - this symptom is very typical for epilepsy (those who communicated with such people know that the patient is constantly “stuck”, which makes it difficult to conduct a dialogue);
Lack of concentration- they say about such people: “That’s what a distracted one from Basseinaya Street!”, That is, absent-mindedness and poor memory in such cases are often perceived as features of temperament and behavior, which, in principle, often corresponds to reality.

Undoubtedly a decrease in concentration of attention, in particular, will adversely affect the entire process of memorizing and storing information, that is, on the state of memory as a whole.

Children forget faster

As for children, all these gross, permanent memory impairments, characteristic of adults and, especially, the elderly, are very rarely noted in childhood. Memory problems that arise due to congenital features require correction and, with a skillful approach (as far as possible), may recede a little. There are many cases when the efforts of parents and teachers literally worked wonders for Down syndrome and other types of congenital mental retardation, but here the approach is individual and dependent on different circumstances.

Another thing is if the baby was born healthy, and the problems appeared as a result of the troubles suffered. So here a child can expect a slightly different reaction to different situations:

Amnesia in children in most cases, it manifests itself as memory lapses in relation to individual memories of episodes that took place during the period of clouding of consciousness associated with unpleasant events (poisoning, coma, trauma) - it is not in vain that they say that children quickly forget;
Alcoholization of adolescence also proceeds differently than in adults - the absence of memories ( polympsests) on events occurring during intoxication, appears already in the first stages of drunkenness, without waiting for a diagnosis (alcoholism);
retrograde amnesia in children, as a rule, it affects a short period of time before an injury or illness, and its severity is not as clear as in adults, that is, memory loss in a child can not always be noticed.

Most often in children and adolescents there is a memory impairment of the type of dysmnesia, which is manifested by a weakening of the ability to remember, store (retention) and reproduce (reproduction) the information received. Disorders of this type are more noticeable in school-age children, as they affect school performance, adaptation in a team, and behavior in everyday life.

In children attending preschool institutions, symptoms of dysmnesia are problems with memorizing rhymes, songs, children cannot participate in children's matinees and holidays. Despite the fact that the kid visits kindergarten all the time, every time he comes there, he cannot find his own locker to change clothes, among other items (toys, clothes, towels) it is difficult for him to find his own. Dysmnestic disorders are also noticeable at home: the child cannot tell what happened in the garden, forgets the names of other children, each time he reads fairy tales he perceives as if he hears them for the first time, he does not remember the names of the main characters.

Transient disturbances of memory and attention, along with fatigue, drowsiness and all sorts of autonomic disorders, are often observed in schoolchildren with various etiologies.

Before treatment

Before treating the symptoms of memory impairment, it is necessary to make a correct diagnosis and find out what causes the patient's problems. To do this, you need to get as much information about his health:

What diseases does he suffer from? Perhaps it will be possible to trace the connection between the existing pathology (or transferred in the past) with the deterioration of intellectual abilities;
Does he have a pathology that directly leads to memory impairment: dementia, cerebrovascular insufficiency, TBI (history), chronic alcoholism, drug disorders?
What medications does the patient take and is memory impairment related to the use of medications? Some groups of pharmaceuticals, for example, benzodiazepines, among the side effects, have such disorders, which, however, are reversible.

In addition, in the process of diagnostic search, it can be very useful to identify metabolic disorders, hormonal imbalance, deficiency of trace elements and vitamins.

In most cases, when looking for the causes of memory impairment, they resort to methods neuroimaging(CT, MRI, EEG, PET, etc.), which help to detect a brain tumor or hydrocephalus and, at the same time, to differentiate a vascular brain lesion from a degenerative one.

The need for neuroimaging methods also arises because memory impairment at first may be the only symptom of a serious pathology. Unfortunately, the greatest difficulties in diagnosis are depressive conditions, forcing in other cases to prescribe a trial antidepressant treatment (to find out if there is depression or not).

Treatment and correction

The normal aging process itself involves some decline in intellectual abilities: forgetfulness appears, memorization is not so easy, concentration of attention drops, especially if the neck is “squeezed” or pressure rises, however, such symptoms do not significantly affect the quality of life and behavior in everyday life. Older people who adequately assess their age learn to remind themselves (and quickly remember) about current affairs.

In addition, many do not neglect pharmaceutical treatment to improve memory.

Now there are a number of drugs that can improve brain function and even help with tasks that require significant intellectual effort. First of all, these are (piracetam, phezam, vinpocetine, cerebrolysin, cinnarizine, etc.).

Nootropics are indicated for elderly people who have certain age-related problems that are not yet noticeable to others. Preparations of this group are suitable for improving memory in violation of cerebral circulation caused by other pathological conditions of the brain and vascular system. By the way, many of these drugs are successfully used in pediatric practice.

However, nootropics are a symptomatic treatment, and in order to obtain the proper effect, one must strive for an etiotropic one.

As for Alzheimer's disease, tumors, mental disorders, here the approach to treatment should be very specific - depending on the pathological changes and the reasons that led to them. There is no single prescription for all cases, so there is nothing to advise patients. You just need to contact a doctor, who, perhaps, before prescribing drugs to improve memory, will send for an additional examination.

Difficult in adults and the correction of disorders of mental activity. Patients with poor memory, under the supervision of an instructor, memorize verses, solve crossword puzzles, practice solving logical problems, however, training, bringing some success (the severity of mnestic disorders seems to have decreased), still do not give particularly significant results.

Correction of memory and attention in children, in addition to treatment with the help of various groups of pharmaceuticals, provides for classes with a psychologist, exercises for the development of memory (poems, drawings, tasks). Of course, the children's psyche is more mobile and better amenable to correction, unlike the adult psyche. Children have the prospect of progressive development, while in older people only the opposite effect progresses.

Video: bad memory - expert opinion

Memory - this type of mental activity, with the help of which past experience is reflected. Symptoms of a memory disorder. 1) Amnesia - loss of memory, its absence˸ a) retrograde amnesia- loss of memory for events preceding the disorder of consciousness or a painful mental state may cover a different period of time; b) anterograde amnesia- loss of memory for events that occurred immediately after the end of a state of upset consciousness or a painful mental state; the duration in time should also be different; c) a combination of these two types of amnesia is often encountered, in which case they speak of retroanterograde amnesia; G) fixation amnesia- loss of ability to remember and record current events; everything that has taken place at the moment is immediately forgotten; e) progressive amnesia characterized by a gradual weakening of memory, and first of all, memory for current events weakens, and then disappears, for what happened recently, for the events of recent years, while a person can remember the distant past for a long time and quite well. The characteristic sequence of memory decline according to the principle of ʼʼreverse memoryʼʼ is called Ribot's law. According to this law, the so-called physiological aging of memory also occurs. 2) paramnesia - erroneous, false, perverse memories. A person can remember the events that really took place, but attribute them to a completely different time. This is called pseudo-reminiscences - false memories˸ a) confabulation- a type of paramnesia, in which fictional memories are completely untrue, when the patient reports something that never really happened. Confabulations often have an element of fantasy; b) cryptomnesia- when a person cannot remember when this or that event happened, in a dream or in reality, he wrote this poem or simply remembered what he once read, that is, the source of any information is forgotten; v) eideticism- a phenomenon in which the representation mirrors the perception. Memory is also involved here in its vivid figurative form; after disappearance, an object or phenomenon retains its living visual image in the human mind. Syndromes of memory disorder˸ 1) Korsakoff's syndrome - a kind of amnestic syndrome. The basis of ᴇᴦο is the inability to remember current events (fixation amnesia) with more or less preserved memory for the past. In this regard, there is a violation of orientation (the so-called amnestic disorientation), another characteristic symptom of this syndrome is paramnesia. Mainly in the form of confabulations or pseudo-reminiscences, but cryptomnesias can also be observed. 2) Organic syndrome (encephalopathic, psychoorganic) consists of the Walter-Bühel triad, which includes: a) emotional lability, emotional incontinence; b) memory disorder; c) decreased intelligence. Patients become helpless, find their bearings with difficulty, their will weakens, their working capacity decreases, they easily switch from tears to a smile and vice versa. Variants of psychopathic behavior of organic origin are not uncommon. The following variants (stages) of the psycho-organic syndrome (K. Schneider) are distinguished: asthenic, explosive, euphoric, apathetic. An organic syndrome can occur in a variety of diseases with direct damage to the brain (tumors, intracranial infections, injuries, vascular pathology of atherosclerotic, syphilitic and other origin); with somatogeny (as a result of obstruction of the liver, kidneys, lungs, etc.); with alcoholism, drug addiction, substance abuse, poisoning with certain toxic substances; in diseases that occur with atrophic processes in the brain (for example, Alzheimer's disease, Pick's disease, etc.). Accompanied by a variety of neurological disorders. The psycho-organic syndrome, as a rule, is irreversible, although it may give some regression with the use of appropriate therapy, incl. nootropics.

Memory. The main symptoms and syndromes of memory disorders. - concept and types. Classification and features of the category "Memory. The main symptoms and syndromes of memory disorders." 2015, 2017-2018.