why do people with amnesia not forget their primary language?
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Different parts of the brain governs different functions of the brain, so if the part that’s for long or short term memory is damaged, there’s tons of other parts that can still be working properly, like emotional connections, learned or ‘muscle’ memory, and language centers. [There’s a fascinating case of a man who lost short term memory retention, but still plays the piano](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Wearing). It’s kind of like having working off only RAM, but your hard drive stopped working.
Language and memory are stored in different parts of the brain. That’s why some types of brain damage can leave you unable to speak without affecting your memory.
Other things unaffected by amnesia are muscle memory and learned skills that don’t require memorization, like critical thinking and empathy.
“Amnesia” can mean a lot of different things, as can memory. This is a pretty big rabbit hole.
First, there can be “anterograde” amnesia and “retrograde” amnesia. Anterograde means from a time forward, and retrograde means from a time backward. Let’s say a person had a neurological trauma back in April. If they developed Anterograde amnesia, they wouldn’t be able to form new memories after that point, and wouldn’t remember things from June, but could remember what they did in February. If they developed Retrograde amnesia, they could tell you what had happened in June, but might not remember February.
Next, amnesia isn’t necessarily complete. It’s not like a complete on- and off-switch on their memory.
Finally, there are different types of memory. For example, memory is sometimes categorized into what’s called “implicit” and “explicit” memory. Explicit memory is like knowing facts – e.g. the capital of Iowa – and implicit memory is like what people call “muscle memory” – e.g. shifting a manual transmission.
There was a very famous anterograde amnesia patient in the mid-20th century who everybody studies in undergraduate psychology classes who was a pianist. You could bring him a piece of music, and he would say he’d never seen it before. He would sight read it, and work on it a bit, getting better with practice. The next day, you could bring him the same piece, and he’d say he’d never seen it before. You could repeat this for two weeks, and on day 14, he’d say he’d never seen it before. But when he sat down to play it, he’d play it very fluently, like it had practiced it over a dozen times. When asked why he could play it so well, he’d rationalize that maybe the piece was just very easy.
This is a good demonstration of implicit and explicit memory. His memory of the title of the song or having played it yesterday is explicit memory, and his skills at playing the song are implicit memory; and his amnesia affected only one of the two types of memory.
In the case of language, it seems that sometimes language could be unaffected because the neurology that underlies the implicit memory of how to speak wasn’t damaged, even through the neurology that underlies forming new explicit memories was damaged.
Sometimes they do. It depends on which part of the brain was damaged. “Semantic” information about words and facts is stored in a different place than “episodic” information about particular events.
So “[semantic amnesia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_amnesia)” *is* a thing. (In fact, it’s not even a particularly uncommon thing, since it’s famously an early symptom of Alzheimer’s Disease.) If you don’t hear about it very often, it’s because it’s very closely associated with general “dementia”.
Amnesia is one of many things where someone can “forget” things. A more specific type of this is called [Aphasia](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/aphasia/symptoms-causes/syc-20369518) where you can forget parts of speaking, reading, writing, etc. Since different parts of the brain do different things, having injuries in specific parts of the brain will cause different problems.
The same way amnesia patients don’t forget how to walk or ride a bike. There are different types of memories and amnesiacs would forget episodic memory and some biographical memory. So they might not remember what they were doing, when events happened, and who a certain person is.
However, language centres of the brain (Broca’s area, Wernicke’s area, and arcuate fasciculus) aren’t what’s affected during amnesia. When they are, we usually call this kind of brain damage “aphasia”.
However, it’s possible for them to forget certain words and terminologies that requires memorization. E.g. forgetting the meaning of “woke” as it was explained to them last week. But can remember what the word “run” means because it’s something that’s learned early on and part of everyday life.
For all the computer nerds out there:
Language is stored in BIOS.
Memory is stored in RAM (short term memory) and the Hard Drive (long term memory).
Normal amnesia is a problem with the accessing from the hard drive
Anterograde amnesia is when you can’t store to hard drive.
Your language is not actually “memorized”. It’s effectively a learned neural skill. This is why memorizing new words doesn’t work as well as using them in context.
as someone with short-term amnesia from a dissociative disorder, sometimes we do. not sure why, and not sure how many people can share this experience, but a lot of times coming out of a dissociative state (or while i’m in it) i feel like speaking english (my native language) is closer to trying to speak a language i’m learning, like i cant hold onto words right or they slip out of my mind.
They’re stored in different parts of the brain.
Like if your house burns down, you still have your car. They’re different.
If you have a bucket of fish, and a separate bucket of worms, the fish might all jump out of the bucket in the middle of the night. But the worms are still there. They’re in different places. Something affecting one bucket doesn’t affect the other.
There’s even different kinds of amnesia, because different kinds of memories are stored differently too.
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