The worst cases of amnesia. “It’s just like being dead”

Amnesia is a condition that results from damage to the brain. The cause may be various types of head injuries, diseases, complications after neurosurgical operations, but also mental injuries resulting from very stressful events. Extreme cases of amnesia can give you the chills. It’s hard to imagine that someone remembers only the last seconds of their life or forgets about the last dozen or so years.

1. As a result of a failed neurological experiment, Henry Molaison was deprived of the possibility of creating new memories and for years was the subject of research by neurologists
2. Famous writer Agatha Christie was missing for 11 days and did not remember what happened to her during that time
3. Naomi Jacobs, 32, woke up without remembering the last 17 years. She was convinced that she was 15 years old
4. Clive Wearing only remembers the last few seconds of life. “It’s just like I’m dead,” he says
5. You can find more such stories on the Onet homepage.

Agatha Christie pictured above.

Henry Molaison forgot all his life. There was only the present moment for him

Henry Molaison, nicknamed “Patient HM”, fell off his bicycle at the age of nine and hit his head hard. He was suffering from epilepsy because of this accident. Over the years, he began to experience more and more frequent seizures that sometimes lasted for days. Molaison underwent a neurosurgical experiment to control unbearable attacks. At the age of 27, he underwent an unsuccessful operation, as a result of which he forgot all his life. The man had an intact short-term memory, but was unable to create new memories. There was only the present moment for him.

Scientists have studied its disorders for five decades, and the conclusions of their observations laid the foundations for a modern understanding of how memory works and for determining the importance of different parts of the brain in the process of remembering. “Henry would never be sad,” recalled Suzane Corkin, professor of behavioral neurology who spent years studying Patient HM. – He had a tragic life, but he made it the best he could. He showed the world that you can be burdened with a huge disability and at the same time contribute a lot to life. I consider him an inspiring figure – she said in 2013 in an interview with «The Guardian».

Agatha Christie has been missing for 11 days

One of the most famous authors of crime fiction, whose books on the secrets of crimes have been published in more than two billion copies, is herself the subject of one of the mysterious stories. W 1926 r. Agatha Christie was missing for 11 days. Her abandoned car was found 320 km from her home. Christie claimed that she did not remember where she was or what happened at that time. The writer was found by her husband, Archibald, in one of the hotels in the city of Harrogate. In an interview with one of the local newspapers, the spouse spoke about Christie’s state. – She’s gone through a complete loss of memory, and I don’t think she knows who she is right now. She doesn’t recognize me and doesn’t know how she ended up in the hotel. I hope that peace and rest will restore her memory – said Archibald.

The writer may have had dissociative amnesia, a rare disease that most often occurs as a result of great stress or trauma. There are several types of this disorder. A sick person may not remember the last few hours, past events in life, remember only one (often traumatic) experience, or in extreme cases may lose the memory of the entire history of his life. This type of amnesia suddenly disappears.

To this day, it is speculated that whether Agatha Chrisite was actually sick, whether she chose 11 days without a sign of life as retaliation against her husband, whom she suspected of cheating. Since 1926, she has published 60 more crime novels and 21 collections of short stories, so it can be concluded that the likely dissociative amnesia quickly subsided.

Naomi Jacobs woke up 17 years younger

In 2008, 32-year-old Naomi Jacobs she woke up, forgetting almost two decades of her life. She had not known any event since 1992 and was convinced herself that she was 15 years old. Her own home was a stranger to her. Sitting up in bed, she didn’t recognize anything. The walls, instead of adolescent decorations, were covered with gray paint. The curtains were different. Her Marilyn Monroe duvet cover was nowhere to be seen, and her sister’s bunk bed was missing. What’s worse after leaving the room, she did not recognize her 10-year-old son. Even so, she remembered some phone numbers and could drive a car.

Jacobs was lucky because for years she kept diaries of her life, which allowed her to restore most of her memories (she did so in eight weeks). She wrote about her traumatic experience in the book “Forgotten Girl”. In his autobiography, he tells about the years wasted on drug use and self-pity. He treats the forgetting of his identity as salvation, not as a curse. She decided that this was a chance for her to start a new life and start her life fully.

Clive Wearing only remembers the last seven seconds

Clive Wearing lived a happy life as a musician. At the age of 47, he fell ill with herpetic encephalitiswhich caused changes to his central nervous system. Since then, he has not been able to create new memories or control his emotions. Due to damage to the hippocampus, the center responsible for transferring information from short-term to long-term memory, he couldn’t remember anything. Researchers have calculated that it remembers the events of the last seven to 30 seconds, and then forgets them forever.

He spends every day the same. When he wakes up, he repeatedly asks why the doctor hasn’t visited him yet, because he still believes he is in the hospital and has only recently woken up from a coma. If he engages in conversation, then he is only able to answer the question in a few sentences because after a while he forgot about the purpose of his speech.

Wearing remembers little of his life before his illness. She knows she has children from a previous marriage, but does not know their names. He greets his current wife Deborah every time as if they have not seen each other for several years. When he eats a meal and recognizes the food, he cannot relate it to the taste, because he forgets what he is eating before the dish reaches his mouth.

In 2005, an ITV Studios production documentary about his case was released.

It makes no difference to me whether it is night or day. I have no thoughts or dreams. Day or night, it doesn’t matter – emptiness. Like death.

Wearing was saying.

The journalist asked him if it was difficult to live with such an ailment?

Not. It’s actually exactly the same as being dead, which isn’t hard, right? It’s easy to be dead. You are doing absolutely nothing, you cannot do anything because you are dead. It looks the same to me.

Journalist: Do you miss your old life?

Yes. But I’ve never been aware enough to honestly think so. I don’t feel any emotions – boredom, sadness or anger. I have felt absolutely nothing since I got sick. It’s like I’m dead. I miss being a musician, I miss being in love once.

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