Home > Anterograde amnesia

Sufferers from "pure" anterograde amnesia will still be able to remember memories laid down before the onset of anterograde amnesia, but will exist in a transient world where anything beyond their immediate attention-span disappears permanently from their consciousness.

Damage to the hippocampus, fornix, or mammillary bodies can result in anterograde amnesia, suggesting that they are involved in the process of laying down long-term memories.

An account of a sufferer of anterograde amnesia is reported by Oliver Sacks in his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. In the book, the patient is called "The Ancient Mariner": a man who began forgetting everything from the end of WWII. He does not even know that he suffers from amnesia and believes himself to be decades younger than he is.

Anterograde amnesia has also featured in fiction:

• In the 1994 comedy Clean Slate , Dana Carvey stars as a man whose anterograde amnesia kicks in whenever he falls asleep (typically once a day).
• The 2000 film Memento, presented in short reverse-chronological scenes, gives viewers some feeling for the confusion of its amnesiac protagonist.
• The 2003 animated film Finding Nemo features Dory (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres), a fish whose short-term memory problems cause her innumerable problems helping clownfish Marlin to find his lost son.
• The 2004 romantic comedy 50 First Dates50 First Dates (2004) is a romantic comedy starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. Henry Roth (Sandler), a marine veterinarian in Hawaii, meets Lucy Whitmore (Barrymore), a beautiful blonde, at breakfast. Usually a love-'em-and-leave-'em kind of guy, He casts Adam SandlerAdam Sandler (born September 9, 1966) is an American actor, comedian, producer, musician and composer who was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Manchester, New Hampshire. In the late 1980s, Sandler portrayed "Smitty" on The Cosby Show ( 1985- 1989 as a man must start anew every day his wooing of anterograde sufferer Drew BarrymoreThe Late Show with David Letterman in 1995, immediately after notoriously flashing the host on-air for his birthday. Drew Blythe Barrymore (born February 22, 1975 in Culver City, California) is an American film and television actress and producer. She is.

See also

• retrograde amnesiaRetrograde amnesia is a form of amnesia where someone will be unable to recall events that occurred before the onset of amnesia. The term is used to categorise patterns of symptoms, rather than to indicate a particular cause or etiology. Both retrograde a