Only one type of amnesia responds to medications. Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome is related to malnutrition and alcohol use and often responds to intravenous fluids and thiamine. Doctors sometimes prescribe an anti-depressant or anxiety medications to help someone with amnesia to deal with the underlying emotional cause or psychosocial affects of the condition.
Amnesia
Amnesia refers to partial, but serious, loss of memory. For example, someone can't remember their mom's maiden name or what happened last Christmas, but may recall the joke their little brother told them a few seconds ago.
Unlike in the movies, real-life amnesia generally doesn't mean you lose your sense of identity. In fact, amnesiacs know who they are, but may have trouble learning new facts and forming new memories.
Amnesia is believed to be caused by damage to areas of the brain where memories are processed and stored. Transient global amnesia is a short-term loss of memory. Amnesic syndrome is long-term memory loss and can be permanent.
While there's no specific treatment, techniques for enhancing memory and psychological support can help amnesiacs and their families cope.
Recently Answered
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1 AnswerA
Discovery Health answeredEven a century after Freud's theories of repressed memories, researchers have not pinned down a precise explanation for why childhood amnesia occurs.
Research of children's memory capabilities, rather than that of adults', just began during the past 20 years. The research has yielded a batch of new questions regarding the nuances of young children's memory.
The rationale behind childhood amnesia for quite some time had rested on the assumption that babies had not yet developed the memory-making part of their brains. The thinking was that around age 3, children's capabilities quickly accelerated to adult levels.
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2 AnswersA
Spotsylvania Regional Medical Center answeredSee All 2 AnswersAmnesia refers to memory loss, either temporarily or permanently. Amnesia seldom causes total memory loss, but a person suffering from amnesia may have difficulty remembering certain experiences and information. Losing memories from before the amnesia is called retrograde amnesia. Someone with amnesia who finds it difficult to learn and create new memories has anterograde amnesia. Amnesia may last just a few minutes or a few hours, and it may involve only recent memories or more long-term memories.
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Stacy Wiegman, PharmD , Pharmacy, answeredSee All 2 AnswersAny drugs that help you sleep or relax could cause amnesia. These include sleep aids like Ambien (zolpidem) or anxiety medications like Valium (diazepam). Valium is in a class of medications called benzodiazepines, and other drugs like it include Xanax (alprazolam), Klonopin (clonazepam), and Ativan (lorazepam). A strange phenomenon that has occurred with benzodiazepines is called anterograde amnesia where you can't make new memories after you take the drug for a period of time. It doesn't appear to be related to the dose--it seems some people just react that way to the drugs. -
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Discovery Health answered
Retrograde amnesia is a condition in which someone is unable to recall stored memories, such as their mother's maiden name or what happened during the holidays - but they may recall a story someone just told them moments ago.
Retrograde memory is not a very common condition.
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Discovery Health answered
Someone who is suffering from anterograde amnesia is unable to recall incidents that occur after the onset of amnesia. It is the form of amnesia that is central to the plot in "Memento," a movie in which the main character suffers a blow to the head and suffers brain damage. Because of this injury, he is unable to form new memories.
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Spotsylvania Regional Medical Center answered
The cause of amnesia depends on which type of amnesia a person suffers. A person can suffer minor, temporary amnesia from a car accident or other common head injury. This type of amnesia rarely lasts long or causes serious problems. More serious neurological amnesia is the result of brain damage or severe injury, which can result from tumors, diseases like Alzheimer's, oxygen deprivation to the brain, stroke, or brain inflammation. Amnesia can also be the result of alcoholism or a reaction to certain drugs. Dissociative amnesia, also called psychogenic amnesia, is rare but usually follows an emotional trauma. Dissociative amnesia is not connected to any neurological or physical injury and is usually limited to memory surrounding a particularly traumatic event or period of life.
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Spotsylvania Regional Medical Center answered
On the one hand, the symptoms of amnesia are very basic: the inability to recall events and information from the past (retrograde amnesia), or the inability to gather and retain new information (anterograde amnesia). On the other hand, it may be difficult to determine the extent of the memory loss because a person may appear to have no difficulty remembering events and people from the past, but they are unable to form new memories. Neurological amnesia is usually associated with pressure on the brain from injury or illness; therefore, the symptoms of amnesia are connected to the condition that caused the onset. With transient global amnesia, memory of a recent event may vanish for a brief time but return. Amnesia can cause irritability and frustration, depending on how long and how severe the memory loss is.
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Spotsylvania Regional Medical Center answered
Amnesia usually has no long-term affects on the body, but it may wreak havoc on the personal and social life of someone who is suffering from it. The irritability, frustration, and confusion that accompany memory loss can affect the individual as well as the friends and family around them. In extreme cases, a person with long-term, severe memory loss may need supervision in a residential setting.
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Spotsylvania Regional Medical Center answered
The use of certain drugs like lithium; alcoholism; stress; stroke; and seizures can increase your risk for amnesia. If you have brain surgery or experience head trauma, you increase your risk of developing amnesia. Transient global amnesia may be the result of arterial blockage or migraines in young adults. Your risk of amnesia also increases if you experience brain damage, or if you have seizures, cancer, or atherosclerosis.