Short term memory loss

There are various diseases connected with memory loss and one of them is short term memory loss. It is not quite usual as other illnesses of the kind, but it does still happen. There is a very good movie that you could see, which shows exactly how a person can lose all of his most recent reminiscences forever, yet remember what happened to him years ago (with very small details). 

That movie is called ‘Memento’ and stars Guy Pearce (writer and director: Christopher Nolan). It is about a man who suffers from short term memory loss and who uses various notes and tattoos to find the man who had killed his wife. You would highly recommend you seeing the movie just to see what the condition looks like. 

You may already know that our short term memory stores information for a very short period of time and it may not necessarily go to long term memory. However, it is still important and one should take care not to cause additional problems to our memory processes. 

Some of the most obvious causes for short term memory loss are: 

Various brain traumas (car accidents, sports injuries and etc.

Bad habits: abuse of alcohol, drugs and other chemical substances.

Various cardiovascular diseases and conditions, especially a stroke. 

There are various ways to prevent the condition, but this is the scope of another article. Hope it will come pretty soon. In the meantime you should remember that if you are facing serious memory problems you should consult your doctor and do not try to solve everything by yourself.

Have a nice day!

P.S. Go to see (or rent) the movie ‘Memento’. 

See also: 

General information about short term memory

General information about short term memory

Short term memory is the topic of my article today. 

Short term memory information stored for a few seconds, usually up to twenty. If it is not strengthened it most probably deleted or pushed somewhere to deeper regions of our memories. If information is repeated within a few minutes it has much greater chances to get to long term memory.

So, information that you study may or may not become part of your long term memory. Much depends on your efforts and strategies that you use to memorize the material. 

New information pushes old information backwards if it is not repeated or rehearsed.

Amount of information that can be held in short term memory: 3-9 This is very debatable. You might remember a list of 30 words in a few minutes, remember them in a period of 10 or 30 minutes and after a day you will remember nothing. 

From sensory memory information gets to short term memory, but only part of information really stays there. Information is kept in what might be called short term field of consciousness. This type of memory differs from sensory one by the time it is kept. It stays there longer. However, possibilities of short term memory are much smaller. If information that stays in working memory repeated, it stays in the circle of attention, if information is coded; it can be transmitted to long term memory. Information from both long term and sensory memory can get into short term memory. Long term memory gives back information to short term memory when we need it to accomplish thinking operations and later it is again stored to long term memory, but only in a new context. Audio coding dominates in short term memory. It means more information is kept as a set of sounds, but part of this information is remembered as image or according to meaning. Information in short term memory is kept not divided into smaller units, but organized into bigger ones on a meaningful basis. 

Although short term memory is just a few seconds it covers all three stages: remembering, keeping and reproduction (regeneration). Some people, often children tend to have eidetic memory. An image is fixed in memory and stays there as such for a few minutes. This type of memory usually disappears when a kid becomes a teenager. 

Most usual method to test your short term memory is to try to remember from 3 to 9 objects, signs, numbers, words or things in a few seconds.