Memory impairment

Memory disorders are impairments of the ability to remember and remember. They are also often referred to as amnesia (from Greek: mnesis = memory), but the term dysmnesia is rather uncommon. Affected are so-called declarative memory contents, i.e. enumerable, writable or imaginable and conscious information.

Depending on the type of memory disorder , they can affect episodic, autobiographical, semantic, verbal or visuo-spatial memory content. The memory contents of the declarative memory do not consist of concrete perceptual contents, but are already a multimodal abstraction from it. Therefore there are z. B. also no specifically visual, auditory or tactile memory disorders. In the clinical area, a distinction is made between anterograde, retrograde, semantic and dissociative memory disorders.

Expressions

Anterograde memory disorder

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It is the most common and most significant form of memory disorder. This affects the acquisition and retrieval of new declarative information. Patients with an anterograde memory disorder have e.g. B. Problems remembering current events, orders, personal names or new knowledge. In a short time they forgot everything. Anterograde memory disorders occur in a large number of cerebral, neurological and psychiatric diseases. Among other things, in traumatic brain injuries , circulatory disorders of the brain, strokes , hypoxia or inflammatory diseases of the brain. Severe anterograde memory disorders are found in the early stages of dementia . Anterograde memory disorders also occur in the most common psychiatric illnesses such as depression , schizophrenia or alcohol addiction . Causes of an anterograde memory impairment are mainly diffuse or local lesions in the area of the enlarged hippocampal system with the consequence of reduced long-term potentiation by the hippocampus and an inadequate connection of new information with existing memory structures. Anterograde memory disorders come in all degrees of severity, from mild to severe memory disorders. Severe anterograde memory disorders are referred to as amnesic syndrome according to ICD-10. Exact evidence of the severity is only possible with the help of a standardized neuropsychological test, e.g. B. with the Berlin amnesia test or the Wechsler Memory Scale , possible.

Retrograde memory disorder

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A retrograde memory disorder is the inability to remember memory content that has been proven to be safely remembered before an illness. In contrast to the anterograde memory disorder, it affects memory contents that existed before the time of illness and that could be safely remembered. Already Ribot reported in 1882 that there is a time gradient in the retrograde memory impairment. The new dies before the old, he wrote. H. the closer a stored event is to the time of illness, the greater the probability that it can no longer be reproduced in the case of a retrograde memory disorder. The retrograde memory disorder can go back weeks, months, years and in particularly severe cases even decades from the time of illness. The patient can thereby lose substantial parts of his ego-consciousness, but he will not forget his complete identity . In particular, he can refer to semantic parts of autobiographical memory, e.g. B. name and date of birth, while z. B. he forgot his current age. In retrograde amnesia, episodic and thus also autobiographical information is primarily affected, e.g. B. the last vacation trip, the age of the children, the own marriage or divorce etc., while general, professional and conceptual knowledge is mostly completely preserved. The retrograde memory disorder is not a disorder of consolidation, but of the ability to recall previously consolidated memory contents. Memory gaps as a result of restricted states of consciousness also have nothing to do with a retrograde memory disorder, since no memory content could be acquired during this time.

Semantic memory disorders

In this form of memory disorders, long-term stored semantic memory contents are affected. These include a. general knowledge, professional knowledge, word meanings and conceptual relationships, but not episodic or autobiographical memory contents. The disorders occur primarily after lesions of the temporal lobe and usually only relate to partial areas of the semantic memory, while others are preserved. In the late stage of degenerative organic brain diseases, e.g. B. in Alzheimer's dementia , but they can gradually include the entire semantic knowledge.

Dissociative memory disorder

In contrast to the anterograde, retrograde or semantic memory disorders, dissociative memory disorders are psychological. It is sometimes misdiagnosed as retrograde memory disorder, even though it has features that do not occur with retrograde memory disorder. These include:

There is a memory loss for mostly important personal information, which may have been triggered by a psychologically very stressful event, e.g. B. a traumatic event without the typical time gradient of a retrograde memory disorder being detectable.
The gaps in memory are not constant, but depend on the day or the examiner.
Also a complete loss of identity, which includes semantically autobiographical information, whereby the patient z. B. does not remember his name, his date of birth and his origin or states that he has forgotten all his biographical knowledge, indicates a dissociative memory disorder (see also ICD-10: F44.0).
If an anterograde memory disorder can be excluded, which is relatively easy with the help of a neuropsychological test (see above), this speaks for a dissociative memory disorder.

Dissociative memory disorder is quite rare and mostly occurs in middle age. A disruption of the semantic memory is also relatively rare. By far the most common and important form is anterograde memory disorder. Retrograde memory disorders are usually only observed in association with severe anterograde memory disorders.

Individual evidence

↑ LR Squire, ER Kandel: Memory - The nature of remembering. Spectrum, Akademischer Verlag, Heidelberg 1999, ISBN 3-8274-0522-X .
↑ Horst Dilling et al. (Ed.): International Classification of Mental Disorders. ICD-10 Chapter V (F). Clinical diagnostic guidelines of the World Health Organization WHO. 2009
↑ AJ Parkin: Remembering and Forgetting - How memory works and what can be done with memory disorders. Verlag Hans Huber, Bern 1999, ISBN 3-456-83254-0 .

[1] LR Squire, ER Kandel: Memory - The nature of remembering. Spectrum, Akademischer Verlag, Heidelberg 1999, ISBN 3-8274-0522-X .

[2] Horst Dilling et al. (Ed.): International Classification of Mental Disorders. ICD-10 Chapter V (F). Clinical diagnostic guidelines of the World Health Organization WHO. 2009

[3] AJ Parkin: Remembering and Forgetting - How memory works and what can be done with memory disorders. Verlag Hans Huber, Bern 1999, ISBN 3-456-83254-0 .