How does a concussion make you lose the memory of events leading up to the accident?

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I crashed my motorcycle last summer and was knocked unconscious for some time and whilst it makes sense to me that the memories once the brain is injured are nonexistent, I don’t understand how the injury can affect the memories created beforehand.

Bonus question based on what I’ve seen looking for an answer to the first question; if memories are recreating the connections/state of the brain as they were at the time the memory was first created, does this mean we have a repository of memory triggers that inform the memory or does it just happen naturally that when you start thinking along those lines, your brain naturally follows paths it has travelled before?

TIA

In: Biology

3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Essentially because the brain “writes” what’s in short-term memory into medium-term and then longer-term memory at intervals (quite long-term only when you’re asleep). If that memory is in short-term and it gets bonked out of your head then it will not have been written into any longer-term memory and it will be forgotten.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Even without a concussion, this may happen. Especially in a traumatic event. Who knows how or why, but our brains seem to have a measure of what’s traumatic and what isn’t (some mental dysfunctions may negatively affect this mechanism).

Anonymous 0 Comments

From what I know, memory is a weird thing. Input isn’t instantly downloaded into your brain, most of the “downloading” happens when you sleep. And when you remember things, it’s usually a sequence of memories, not just single events. When you see a bomb go off, you might remember walking to where u were, the smell of something as u we’re going to the place you were, something someone said right before the bomb. A concussion could be like your computer crashing before you hit the save button