The Curious Case of Clive Wearing

Eugene Kyere, Wyatt Andresen, Sarah Kerman, Elijah Davila

 On March 26, 1985 Clive Wearing went to bed and

awoke the next morning unable to recall his wife’s name or answer simple questions.  Originally diagnosed with influenza and sleep deprivation, he was prescribed sleeping medication and left in a pill induced slumber while his wife left for work

 After being found wandering the streets he was

taken to a hospital were he was finally diagnosed with Herpes Encephalitis, a disease that began eating holes into his brain and causing it to swell against his skull, resulting in severe memory loss as well as retrograde and anterograde amnesia

 Herpes Encephalitis- inflammation of the brain due

to a herpes simplex virus. Basically a cold sore in the brain  retrograde amnesia- a memory disorder that cause the inability to remember events or experiences that happen before an important time. Anterograde amnesia- Events after amnesia cannot be remembered and new memories cannot form

 Besides the swelling and holes in his brain in

damaged parts like the occipito-parietal, frontal lobes, thalamus, hypothalamus and amygdale. The part that is completely gone is is the hippocampus(Greek for seahorse). This is what we use for recalling and remembering as well as laying down new thoughts.

 Clive has a short term memory of about 7 to 30

seconds  He forgets things easily and has no recollection of what just happened to him

But oddly Enough… •Musician- retained ability to read and play music- showed short term memory impacted but long term memory largely intact b/c temporal lobe not impacted •Sensory perception of stimuli not impacted

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwigmktix2Y

 Stark, C.E. (2003) Hippocampal damage equally impairs memory

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for single items and memory for conjunctions. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12699335 Casler, Leah (2013) Anterograde Amnesia: The Problem that is Forgotten. Mercer University http://faculty.mercer.edu/spears_a/studentpages/anterograde/i mage6.jpg http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/3313452/The-man-whokeeps-falling-in-love-with-his-wife.html http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/09/24/070924fa_fac t_sacks http://dictionary.reference.com/