Why does amnesia not affect learned language and/or speech?
In: Biology
Because it wouldn’t be called that.
If you had brain trauma, got injured, and woke up without the ability to speak or understand anything that’s being said to you, no one would describe your issue as amnesia.
If you, cinematically, woke up from your trauma otherwise fine but unable to remember your identity then you get to say you have amnesia. I’m not sure how often that happens.
Speaking is a skilled motor activity while amnesia affects consolidation and retrieval of memories. They occur in different parts of the brain.
Because amnesia, rarely if ever works like it does in fiction.
Amnesia is usually related with brain damage which affects how memories are created or retrieved.
And that brain damage sometimes also affects your ability to speak and/or use language.
Technically speaking amnesia refers to two types.
Anterograde and retrograde amnesia. One is the inability to remember previously formed memories and the other the inability to form new memories. The reason for this is because memory is stored in several different places in the brain.
Amnesia as seen in movies is related to damage or dysfunction in only on or two of those areas, thus people usually have their language memory intact. I’m fact language is so important humans have several areas dedicated to it.
The odds that all areas of memory are affected by damage is usually very slim as you would normally be dead or in serious condition if all areas were damaged simultaneously.
I’m most fiction, they depict damage to the hippocampus, this area is important for the formation of new memories. The example is 50 first dates. That is actually accurate, someone could remember everything from the past but not form new memories.
If you are wondering how they “remember” during the day, usually the amount of damage determines how long they can remember something. Since we still have short term memory they can function like normal people but cannot encode those memories into long term memory for storage and retrieval.
Types of memories are stored in different ways. I once read about some cases of people with brain injuries losing memory of their native language, and needing to communicate in a second language.
Injuries to different parts of the brain will not affect all types of memory equally.
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