Why do people with amnesia forget things like the names of people, or past memories; but they don’t forget how to speak or how to count and do maths?
In: Biology
Different activities are handled by different parts of the brain. Amnesiacs have typically suffered damage to the part of the brain tasked with storing/retrieving event and object memory – specific things and places and events.
That area doesn’t handle “operative” memory like speech, logic, or motor skills, so the unlucky patient is usually perfectly articulate and coordinated, they just can’t remember anything. There are multiple cases of severe amnesiacs still knowing how to play instruments or do other complex tasks, but with no knowledge of how they learned such a skill.
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