11/28/2023 0 Comments Amnesia from trauma![]() “As individuals, we may have had the experience of a ‘memory jog’ or cue that reminds us of a long-forgotten memory. “One of the issues we see in the persistence of this myth is that understanding how the brain forgets, recovers and/or loses information is a complicated matter that is still being studied by brain scientists,” Spiers said. With “no hard and fast lines between scientific and popular writing,” myths like the second trauma amnesia cure circulated out of control, according to Spiers.Įven as modern scientists began to fully understand the brain, the theory still stuck with a large amount of the public, resulting in the lumps we continue to see on cartoon characters’ heads. A second blow wasn’t likely to jump-start the brain, they realized, but create further damage.īy this time, however, enough anecdotes about curing amnesia with a second head trauma were floating around from otherwise respectable scientists that the theory invaded the general public’s consciousness. It wasn’t until the mid-1800s that scientists began to realize that taking a hit to the head might just destroy memories completely. However, Samuel Taylor Coleridge - a philosopher, not a physician - was credited with popularizing that idea. Books in the following decades cited brain asymmetry as the root of different mental health issues.Ĭompounding the symmetry idea was also the dominant thought that human memories could never be lost. “This was not unusual at the time, to forgo evidence like that.”ĭespite backup to his claims, Bichat’s ideas continued on after his death and became known as Bichat’s Law of Symmetry. “From my reading of Bichat’s work, it seems that he felt that the second trauma amnesia cure was a common occurrence and didn’t need the citation of an individual case,” Spiers said. “Bichat justified this idea by reasoning that hemispheres that are in balance with each other functioned better, while those out of balance cause perceptual and intellectual confusion.”īichat never cited any specific cases to back up his theory and, ironically enough, he died of a probable head injury in 1802. “ seriously proposed the notion that a second blow could restore the wits of someone who had a previous concussion,” Spiers wrote in her paper. One side mirrored the other, and vice versa.Īs such, he reasoned that an injury to one side of the head would throw off the other, “untouched” side. Also, many people, including physicians, philosophers and those in the arts, speculated about the function of the brain, the soul and consciousness, so there were many competing ideas.”Īt one point, scientists landed on the idea that it was a double organ, like a person’s eyes or ears, two pieces that were redundant - doing the same work.Īround the turn of the 19th century, a French scientist named Francois Xavier Bichat decided that the two hemispheres acted in synchrony. “There was no way to look into the living brain, as powerful functional imaging now allows us to do. “Studying the brain in the past was very challenging for several reasons,” Spiers explained. ![]() Spiers, PhD, associate professor in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Psychology, traced the origins of the double-trauma amnesia cure belief in a paper for Neurology titled, “The Head Trauma Amnesia Cure: The Making of a Medical Myth.”įor a long time, scientists worked to figure out why the brain had two hemispheres. ![]() And, believe it or not, that belief was spurred by members of the medical community dating as far back as the early 19th century. However, a shockingly high level of the general public endorse the Flintstones solution, with 38–46 percent believing that a second blow to the head could cure amnesia, according to Drexel’s Mary Spiers. While that worked in “The Flintstones” world and many other fictional realms, the medical community knows that like doesn’t cure like when it comes to head trauma. Quick, when Fred Flintstone had a bowling ball fall on his head that made him forget who he was, what was the way to fix him again?ĭropping another bowling ball on him, obviously. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |