Amnesia News and Research

Latest Amnesia News and Research

Study sheds light on how we form new memories

A study conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh involving an amnesia-inducing drug has shed light on how we form new memories.

18 Jul 2006

Strange behaviour blamed on sleeping pills

Reports of some very strange behavior by insomniacs taking a prescribed sleeping pill have been of concern and have raised safety questions about insomnia medications.

16 Mar 2006

Exposure to toxin domoic acid might negatively affect unborn children

Duke University Medical Center researchers have found that the naturally occurring marine toxin domoic acid can cause subtle but lasting cognitive damage in rats exposed to the chemical before birth. Humans can become poisoned by the potentially lethal, algal toxin after eating contaminated shellfish.

6 Sep 2005

Habit memory - humans clearly can acquire and retain knowledge through repetition

Humans have a "robust" capacity to learn and retain new information unconsciously, retaining so-called habit memory even when conscious or declarative learning is absent, memory experts at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the San Diego Veterans Affairs Health System report in the July 28, 2005 issue of Nature.

27 Jul 2005

The way the movies represent amnesia is profoundly misleading

Analyzing a host of movies from the silent era up to the present day, the paper traces a number of regular misconceptions about the condition.

20 Dec 2004

Findings point to the hippocampus as critical to the process of recollection

For millennia, the process of memory and remembering has intrigued scholars and scientists. In 350 B.C., Aristotle, in his seminal treatise on the subject, described it as having two forms: familiarity and recollection. Of these, he considered recollection to be a purely human condition.

8 Sep 2004

Neural basis of memory loss

Most forms of memory loss are caused by some type of brain injury - particularly to the hippocampus. Amnesia can arise from brain damage that interferes with memory storage, retrieval, or consolidation. What ultimately causes amnesia - a failure to store memories or a failure to retrieve them - is not clear.

16 Aug 2004

People involved in side-impact crashes are three times more likely to suffer a traumatic brain injury than people involved in head-on collisions

Occupants of automobiles involved in side-impact crashes are three times more likely to suffer a traumatic brain injury than people involved in head-on or other types of collisions, according to a University of Rochester study published online for the August edition of Annals of Emergency Medicine.

29 Jul 2004

New insights into a mysterious type of amnesia

Researchers have new insights into a mysterious type of amnesia, according to a study published in the June 22 issue of Neurology

21 Jun 2004

Patent issued for GHB, date rape drug test

A patent for a highly sensitive test to detect the presence of the "date rape" drug, GHB, has recently been granted to the University of California, Santa Barbara.

9 Jun 2004

Some amnesiacs can maintain their memories for a longer period of time if they spend time sitting in a dark, quiet room

Amnesia sufferers can lose their short-term memories within one minute of the initial thought. While such things as head injuries and strokes are known to cause amnesia, very little is known about why such severe memory loss occurs. However, a University of Missouri-Columbia researcher has discovered that some amnesiacs can maintain their memories for a longer period of time if they spend time sitting in a dark, quiet room.

17 May 2004