Re: Semi-nonspoiler review: "Mememto"

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Jul 16 2001 - 02:25:25 MDT


On Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 10:57:58PM -0700, Ken Clements wrote:
>
> The story is about a guy who suffered brain damage during an attack in his home
> that resulted in the murder of this wife. His injury has left him without the
> ability to form long term memory. In the movie he explains that he has a loss of
> short term memory, but actually he has good short term memory, and access to all
> his long term memory before the injury, he just cannot make new long term memory,
> so everything from the murder to a few minutes ago is gone.

Anterograde amnesia, actually one of the most common forms of amnesia (but
a lot of descriptions of the movie call it "a rare form of amnesia"). The
most common cause is damage to the temporal lobe memory system, for example
due to Alzheimers, a stroke or ischemia. A lot of people say that it is
about "bad short term memory", which is a somewhat strange way of putting
it; I would rather call it bad intermediate memory - the transfer from
short term to long term memory is damaged.

As a memory researcher, I'm really looking forward to this film. Amnesia
and a plot! Wow!

-- 
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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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