Causes
There are three generalized
categories in which amnesia could be acquired by a person.
The three categories
are head trauma (example: head injuries), traumatic events (example: seeing
something devastating to the mind), or physical deficiencies (example: atrophy
of the hippocampus).
The majority of amnesia and related memory issues derive
from the first two categories as these are more common and the third could be
considered a sub category of the first.
Head trauma is a very broad
range as it deals with any kind of injury or active action toward the brain
which might cause amnesia.
Retrograde and Anterograde amnesia are more often
seen from events like this, an exact example of a cause of the two would be
electroshock therapy, which would cause both briefly for the receiving patient.
Traumatic events are more
subjective. What is traumatic is dependent on what the person finds to be
traumatic.
Regardless, a traumatic event is an event where something so
distressing occurs that the mind chooses to forget rather than deal with the
stress.
A common example of amnesia that is caused by traumatic events is
dissociative amnesia, which occurs when the person forgets an event that has
deeply disturbed them.
An example would be a person
forgetting a fatal and graphic car accident involving their loved ones.
Physical deficiencies are
different from head trauma as physical lean more toward passive physical
issues.
The difference would be having surgery that removes part of your brain,
this would be active and thus head trauma, while the surgery caused the
surrounding areas to atrophy, which is passive.
Henry Molaison is a great
example of physical deficiencies as parts of his brain began to atrophy after
his surgery.
Amongst specific causes of
amnesia are the following:
in which seizures are electrically induced in patients
for therapeutic effect can have acute effects including both retrograde and
anterograde amnesia.
can both cause blackouts and have deleterious effects on
memory formation.
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