How is it that people who suffer from amnesia retain the ability to comprehend and speak the language they did prior to the event that caused the amnesia?
In: Biology
As everyone has said, there are different brain regions that are major contributors to certain tasks. The hippocampus is a major player in long term memory storage. There is a well studied case of a patient named Henry Molaison where they removed parts of his hippocampus. He developed amnesia and could not form new memories. One of the things they had him do was trying to see if he could still learn physical skills. He had to draw a star but by looking at the reflection instead so it’s more difficult. They saw that he got better at it with repeated trials even though he has no recollection of doing the task and for him, it’s always the first time he’s doing it. With this, it seems that learning skills with movement(procedural memory) are processed differently. So they concluded that different memories are processed differently. It’s not just one big entity called “memory”. You can lose some memory (by injuring certain brain parts) and still be fully functional on others (uninsured brain parts).
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